The brothers Fernando and Edgardo Debas arrived in Madrid in 1872, coming from France, and soon became the main court photographers of Alfonso XII, above Laurent, who was then in full swing of his activity. The article reveals the keys to this situation as well as the details of his previous activities in France, the circumstances of his arrival…[Read more]

At the beginning are described first reports made in Spain on major exhibitions, since the great exhibition of London in 1851. Below is a brief review about the photographers Laurent, Debás and Esperon, who were the authors of the photo album made in 1877 about the «Exposición Vinícola» in Madrid. Finally, the article focuses on the desc…[Read more]

This commentary takes advantage of the provenance established by Hoffman, et al.2018 to explore exclusionary symbol sets in Art, Astrology, and Myth within La Pasiega Gallery C in Spain. Using the One Godz paradigm plus the added parameter of U-TH dating this commentary ascribes meaning to two proximate rock art panels, one homo sapien and the…[Read more]

The discovery of the importance of photographer Luis Leon Masson and the observation that, nevertheless, has been almost ignored in all the temporal space in which the Spanish photohistory has been developing in the last thirty years, has led us to ask ourselves about the circumstances that have concurred so that this character, who was able to…[Read more]

Throughout the twentieth century, the two major projects carried out in Spain to commercialize ste- reoscopic photography were those of the Barcelona publishing house Alberto Martín and the photo- grapher José Codina Torrás, both projects with an obvious tourist orientation. During the decade of 1910, the publishing house Alberto Martín lau…[Read more]

Stereoscopic photography begins in the Canary Islands at the end of the 1850s, not only by photographers and news from Peninsular Spain but also through the important English colony. The names of Piazzi Smyth and Jessica Duncan, of photographers such as Luis Marín del Corral, Manuel Sapera, Rafael and Bartolomé Belza or Juan González Méndez and…[Read more]

If we look at the past three decades in the history of Eastern Europe, Ukraine may safely be placed at the top of the chart of “unstable” states. First was the student-led Revolution on Granite in the 1990s. The outcome of that revolution was a resignation of entrenched high-ranked Soviet officials under the pressure of public opinion. Then, if…[Read more]

This monograph explores the ambivalent position of Artigas in the political-cultural debate of the Cold War, during the 1950s, when two principal art movements were opposed. On one side, socialist realist tendencies that emerged in post-revolutionary Russia, particularly after the ascension of Stalin, who intended it to be the new art of the…[Read more]

Book review. Taras Kuzio “Putin’s War against Ukraine: Revolution, nationalism and crime,” CreateSpace Independent, in association with the Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, 2017

Book review. Abel Polese. “Limits of a Post-Soviet State,” Ibidem-Verlag, 2016. ISBN 978-3-8382-0845-9

Ukraine’s current fight against Russian aggression carries deep historic resonances which we ignore at our peril.

The research: (1) embraces peculiarities of the current EU foreign policy towards Ukraine; (2) enumerates and analyzes documents, agreements and treaties which establish the frameworks for this policy; (3) discovers the impact of human rights issues on shaping and conducting this policy. Based on the criminal trials against opposition leaders, the…[Read more]

Few people realise that the idea of establishing a Black Sea Union (BSU) – a regional bloc along the Black Sea littoral – was proposed in the immediate aftermath of WWII. This idea was primarily developed and advocated by Yuriy Lypa, a Ukrainian inter-war political thinker (1900-1944). In his books, Lypa described the dominant cultural, pol…[Read more]

Post-communist Ukraine is in the midst of implementing reforms which it missed for centuries. It gradually evolves into a unique geopolitical entity which, finally, acquires a fair chance to be consistent and self-sufficient. However, if the West takes a neutral stance today – as it frequently happened in history – a “decentralized” Ukraine…[Read more]

The article focuses on the Ukrainian geopolitical presence in the Black Sea littoral tracing its development since the beginning of the twentieth century. An attempt is made to predict the future regional policies of Ukraine taking into account ongoing irreversible processes: the recent Ukrainian democratic revolution, early presidential elections…[Read more]

The article outlines the geopolitical rationale behind contemporary Russian expansionism, as well as presents the asymmetric and “hybrid” mechanisms utilized by the Kremlin to solidify its authority in the post-communist space. To do this, the article refers to the findings of American, British, Polish and Ukrainian intellectuals on the nature of…[Read more]

This book highlights the quantitative methods of data mining and information visualization and explores their use in relation to the films and writings of the Russian director, Dziga Vertov. The theoretical basis of the work harkens back to the time when a group of Russian artists and scholars, known as the “formalists,” developed new concepts of…[Read more]

The opening text for the exhibition Hafıza-i Beşer: Osmanlı Yazmalarından Hikâyeler | Memories of Humankind: Stories from the Ottoman Manuscripts, organized by the Istanbul Research Institute, open between October 18, 2019 – July 25, 2020.

Sergi Küratörü/Exhibition Curator
K. Mehmet Kentel

Danısmanlar/Advisors
M. Baha Tanman, Selim S.…[Read more]

As per its title

The annexation of Crimea is not an ordinary event in contemporary international relations. Since WWII, there has been no precedent in Europe when one state under dubious premises has forcefully annexed a part of another state. This article scrutinizes the Crimean case in the context of the ongoing Ukrainian crisis and uncovers the rationale behind…[Read more]