Digital Bride: Clichés in the Post-Soviet Russian Wedding Photography

Abstract

This paper is dedicated to the phenomenon of wedding photo sessions in Post-Soviet Russia and it is based on Marshall McLuhan’s conception of the clichés which circulate in popular culture. The paper investigates the clichés typical to the wedding photography developed between the mid 2000s and the mid 2010s when the middle-class culture in Russia began to stand out. According to McLuhan, clichés refer us to various archetypes, on the one hand, and create a bricolage, or in other words some new construction, on other hand. Wedding photography illustrates the manner in which the clichés taken from the glamour culture, the fashion photography of the 20^th century and from mass movies participate in the creation of images of brides and grooms. The article seeks to embed these images in the context of the transformation of the family institution and of the role of marriage in contemporary Russia.