Buriak Larysa

Biography through the optics of the art of photography: Louise Arner Boyd collection as a visualisation of author’s world

Section: Theory and methodology of modern biography

Abstract: The purpose of the research is to reconstruct the biographical world of Louise Arner Boyd (1887-1972) – a famous American traveler, Arctic explorer and photographer based on the rereading of the collection of her pictures taken in Western Ukraine in the early 1930s. The scientific novelty consists in revealing the potential possibilities of the photographic collection, which was chosen as a starting point and a tool for reconstructing the biographical world of L. A. Boyd in the dimension of "biographical illusion" (Pierre Bourdieu). The collection of photographs had been interpreted as a "photographic message" (Roland Barthes) and a type of author’s text, which provides new opportunities for the creating of an imaginary biographical reconstruction of its author – an optimistic, successful and self-confident woman with an exquisite aesthetic taste, who perceived the real world as it was. For the first time the array of photographs stored in digitized form in the library of the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee in the USA was analyzed in terms of gender sensitivity and as a kind of intersection of the American and Ukrainian cultural worlds as well as an American view of the Western Ukrainian society of the early 1930s. The research methodology is based on a biographical approach, art criticism, cultural, anthropological, and source studies with an emphasizing on analogy, association, and scientific intuition. Conclusions. Fixing the moments of the life of the Western Ukrainian society as certain cultural codes, the collection of photos at the same time reveals the character traits, world outlook, preferences, and artistic tastes of L. A. Boyd, which were markers of her biographical world in the "life as a journey" paradigm.

Keywords: Louise Arner Boyd, biographical world, "biographical illusion", photographic collection, "photographic message", Western Ukrainian society.

  Full-text PDF    https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.23.059     Citation

• Buriak Larysa ( V. I. Vernadsky National Library of Ukraine, Ukraine, Kyiv, [email protected]) ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4631-844X

Cite:
Buriak Larysa (2022). Biography through the optics of the art of photography: Louise Arner Boyd collection as a visualisation of author’s world. Biographistica Ukrainica, (23) 59-77. (In Ukrainan). https://doi.org/10.15407/ub.23.059

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