Oksana Avramenko, Photo | Urban Media Archive

Oksana Avramenko

The collection of a Sevastopol resident who was relocated due to the annexation of Crimea consists of photos and slides from family and found archives. The vast majority of pictures in the private archive are related to Oksana Avramenko's maternal relatives and cover the period from 1959 to 1990. Photographs from family archives, taken by unknown authors, were found by Oksana's father.

The collection captures moments from the private and professional lives of the Shalte family and related individuals in the context of late Soviet everyday life. Some of the photographs are family portraits taken during holidays, trips and walks, in particular against the backdrop of architectural monuments in Sevastopol and the southern coast of Crimea, sometimes in the genre of souvenir photos taken by professional photographers. The other part of the photos concerns the activities of preschool institutions, where Oksana's grandmother, Zinaida Shalte, worked as a teacher and later as a headmistress. The images show children's parties in the kindergarten and the pupils' stay at the beach.

The slides in the collection were taken by Oksana's father on ORWO slide film with a Zenit-ET camera between 1990 and 1995. They include photographs of weddings and holidays, interior shots of Oksana's parents' apartment in Murmansk, and her childhood in Sevastopol.

The names of Oksana Avramenko's parents have been anonymised in the archive descriptions for the safety of individuals residing in temporarily occupied territories.

The materials from private archives of unknown individuals consist mainly of group and individual portraits taken between 1955 and 1989. A significant number of photos depict family and youth leisure activities, weddings and banquets, and seaside holidays. There is a distinct presence of naval themes, in particular portraits of sailors and cadets. A separate thematic block consists of photographs from the Artek children's camp that highlight camp gatherings, sporting events, and excursions.

A significant part of the collection consists of Alexander Timofeev’s private archive, containing 266 photographs and 13 documents, which was found in an iron suitcase a few kilometres from the neighbourhood where its owner lived in Sevastopol. The author of this ‘orphaned’ archive spent his childhood in military settlements in the Georgian SSR and the Moscow region, and his student years in Novosibirsk. In 1983, Alexander moved to Sevastopol, and his fate since then remains unknown. The photographs depict his childhood and school years; student life, including parties in the hall of residence, hiking trips and work in construction brigades; and his military service. The documents consist of certificates from his educational institutions, a Komsomol membership card, congratulatory telegrams, invitations to alumni reunions, and air and rail tickets.

The collection comprises 83 photographs from the private archive of Zinaida Pavlovna Drachenko (1953–?), discovered in Sevastopol. A native of the village of Ropovo in the Mykolaiv region, she worked as a passenger carriage attendant before beginning her service in 1973 as a cook in military units of the Soviet Navy’s Black Sea Fleet in Sevastopol. In 1986, her son Serhiy was born, and Zinaida was promoted to the rank of senior military cook. During her service, she was stationed at a communications centre and a construction battalion. She retired in 1994. Most of the photographs in the archive are portraits of sailors, dedicated to Zinaida ‘as a lasting memento’. Some depict friends’ wedding celebrations and sightseeing trips to cities across Russia. The rest depict her son’s childhood and school years.