Антонов Д.И., Майзульс М.Р. Демоны и грешники в древнерусской иконографии: семиотика образа. М.: Индрик, 2011. 376 с.; илл. (D. Antonov, M. Maizuls. Demons and Sinners in Old Russian Iconography: The Semiotics of the Image) (original) (raw)

Архипова А.С., Доронин Д.Ю. Технология и мифология: фотография в ритуальном контексте // Визуальное и вербальное в народной культуре: Матер. Междунар. школы-конф. М.: РГГУ, 2013. С. 45–50 [Taking picture of a demon: on the crossroads of mythology and technology in the modern world]

Taking picture of a demon: on the crossroads of mythology and technology in the modern world

This paper is based on the materials collected in the field work in different regions of Russia, India, Mongolia, Kazahstan and South Siberia (2006–2012) and records from Tajikistan, and Badakshan Province and Pamir regions, P.R. China. In the epoch of positivism it was apparent that the primitive cultures are opposed to the industrial societies, and introduction of technical novelties leads only to the degradation of the naive life of savages. This was stated more than 100 years ago about the use of a photocamera in the bush. The naive superstitions will come out through one door when electricity would come in to the other! – enthusiastically claimed an ethnographer in the early 1920s in Tajikistan. Now, when cameras, radio and phones are used almost everywhere, it is the greatest temptation for scholars to check how they influence, if they do, on the local beliefs and myths. In order to reach that aim, let us investigate any possible connections between supernatural creatures (demons, local spirits, deities) and process of taking pictures (by camera) in Asian, Pamir and Northern Chinese regions. As a result which was found is that pictures became a part of important rituals in folk medicine: a portrait of patient cures him, because the demon of illness moves to the picture from the sick person. But sceptics can argue that here the photograph is only a convenient substitute of old traditional symbolical image (made from wood, for example) used in such rituals. In other cases, the function of photograph is completely new, and new customs emerge as a result of the technical possibility of the camera to make instant pictures. For example, a Mongolian ethnic group was divided in two parts along the border between Mongolia and China, and their worshipping rituals were ruined because the Mongolian part of the tribe could not see and worship the mountain (which remained in the Chinese part) with de ities. However, the possibility to make instant pictures resumed the link between local spirits and their people.