“Little Adults”: Photo Images of Children of Modern Russian Elite

Abstract

This article is devoted to the children of the elite used as a kind of mirror reflecting the social characteristics of their parents. In order to make research assumptions about children and parents as representatives of a social group the author addresses their concept of education. To identify this concept the author uses visual sources of sociological information: a series of photos of children, representatives of the contemporary Russian elite made by one photographer. To decode the content of the photos, in particular, the interpretation of the elements of children corporeality, the author proposes a combination of methods. Firstly, the elements of iconographic analysis, which identifies relevant ways of representing children’s emotions in existing culture. Secondly, the technique of photo analysis on the basis of a semiotic approach, combined with some principles of discourse analysis of texts within the framework of local analysis of discourse. Thus, the article offers one possible approach to the analysis of elites as social groups, as well as the methodology of the sociological interpretation of the content of photographs on example of the children of the elite. The author comes to the conclusion that a seemingly strange facial expression of the children in the photos, uniquely interpreted by the photographer in the title of this photo series (“Little adults”), does not manifest the adulthood but marks the formation of elite intragroup identity. Certain facial expressions of children as well as their clothing are the result of unreflective (perhaps only partly conscious) design of their parents who distinguish their social group and emphasize elitism that suggests fully formed elite institution in modern Russia.