No. 36 - 08/2024:
From the City to the Mountains: Imagining the Carpathians in
Culture and Art

Shumylovych, Bohdan and Joshua First (eds.). 2024. From the City to the Mountains: Imagining the Carpathians in Culture and Art, Euxeinos 14 (36). doi.org/10.55337/36.

Editorial by Bohdan Shumylovych and Joshua First

Presenting the Carpathians: The Visual Economy of Juliusz Dutkiewicz’s Photographs by Ksenya Kiebuzinski

Juliusz Dutkiewicz (1834-1908) was an ethnographic and mountaineering photographer of the greater Pokuttia region and its people. His images captured the interest of a bourgeoning circle of scholars who were eager to describe and promote the Carpathian Mountains, and the region’s diverse ethnographic communities, for imperial, urban, and/or national readers and tourists. Dutkiewicz’s photographs served as ethnographic sources and sightseeing souvenirs. The considerable circulation, dissemination and imitation of this photographer’s images throughout the turn of the 20th century helped create the visual idea of the Carpathians across Europe. 

Habsburg Imperial Image-Space: Negotiating Belonging Through Photography by Martin Rohde and Herbert Justnik 

This article examines the visualization of Hutsuls in German-Austrian, Ukrainian, Polish and Russophile ethnographic texts, asking how national and imperial imaginations of space were produced through such fluid cross-linking of texts and photographs. Considering the radical changes in image circulation since the late-19th century, we aim to reconsider the role of photography in image-making of the Habsburg Empire. This article shows how the same images were supposed to serve many purposes, when they were embedded in different settings. The construction of photographic objectivity, the circulation of images through imperial infrastructures and the exoticization of rural peoples were, however, common phenomena. 

The Roads of Baal Shem Tov: Reimagining the Carpathians as a Jewish Space in the 20th Century by Vladyslava Moskalets

This article examines the Jewish imagination of the Carpathians in 20th-century literature. Non-Jewish observers who discovered the Carpathians at this time typically saw the Jews as an alien symbol of urban civilization that disturbed the authenticity of mountain life. The article analyzes essays from various Jewish intellectuals, whose aim was to rediscover the Carpathians as a Jewish space through the figure of the Hasidic leader Baal Shem Tov, who lived in the area during the 18th century. By connecting his life with the mountain landscape, they created a Jewish figure embedded in nature and not alienated from it. 

The National Ecology of the Carpathians in Soviet Ukrainian Cinema: Between Hutsul Ethnography and the Magic of the Mountains by Joshua First 

This article frames the Carpathian Mountains in Ukrainian cinema within a broader discourse of “mountains and meaning,” both within Soviet Ukraine, and within global nationalisms during the first half of the 20th century. Within this discourse, mountains are simultaneously transcendent spaces imbibed with religious and national meaning, but also spaces of commerce and tourism. This article examines the intersections of those spaces in three different eras of Ukrainian cinema, during the Second World War; the post-war era; and the 1960s. I ground these films in global processes of mountain fetishism, within which the mountains move between containment and porousness. 

Vernacular Landscapes in the Carpathians: Materialized Imaginaries in Post-Soviet Ukraine by Roman Lozynskyi 

Diverse landscapes and eclectic architecture emerged in the Carpathians after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This paper examines what imaginaries materialized about urbanity/urbanness, modernity, and people’s relationships to place and authenticity in vernacular landscapes and architecture in the Boikivshchyna region in Ukraine. Landscape visual/textual analysis shows from the perspective of semiotics that local residents now relate more closely to modernity and progress, but have cut their rustic roots by disregarding both place identity and building traditions. Conspicuous consumption with urban and social status symbols is evident in affluent residents’ houses and utilitarianism in the homes of the less wealthy.