The image of the kazakh family in visual sources оf the 19th –early 21th centuries: representation of traditions and influence of modernity

Abstract

At the present stage, the tasks of strengthening the institution of the family and family values have been updated, which since 1989 have been the focus of attention of the UN General Assembly. In 2016, Kazakhstan adopted the Concept of Family and Gender Policy until 2030. The family as the most important social microstructure is an integral part of the entire social system. Representatives of various scientific fields are studying the institution of the family, including ethnographers, sociologists, family psychologists, lawyers, and political scientists. In historical science, the problems of family history are presented in the field of social history. Sources for studying family history include both traditional documents containing statistical data on family composition, characteristics of the legal norms of family and marriage relations, ego-documents (letters, diaries, memoirs), and visual evidence of family history, presented in photographs, in documentary and feature films, in videos from family archives.

The multidimensionality of the content of historical visual sources on the history of the family introduced into scientific circulation poses the task for historians to develop approaches to the characteristics of measuring the changes that have occurred in the institution of the family in Kazakh society from tradition to modernity. The purpose of the article is to identify the features of the reflection of traditional norms and processes of modernization in the image of the Kazakh family based on the analysis of visual and audio-visual sources of the Kazakhs in the period from the end of the 19^th century until the beginning of the 21^st century.

The presented article will study how the Kazakh family has been represented for more than a hundred years in photographs and cinema, in videos, how traditional norms are reflected in visual sources and how the processes of modernization and globalization affect the visual representation of the Kazakh family, what changes can be observed in official and vernacular photographs of Kazakh families of the 19-21 centuries. The practical significance of this work lies in the study of ideas about the visual image of the family in Kazakhstan.

Key words: family photography, tradition, modernity, image, Kazakhs, family memory, family visualization