St. Petersburg Geographic Society Exhibition (St. Petersburg, Russia, 2014)

On the 25 September 2014, an exhibition was held in the Great Hall of the headquarters of the Russian Geographical Society, part of the "Meeting of Frontiers: Orochen People in Manchuria through the eyes of Russian and British anthropologists" during the early 20th century.

It portrayed the photographs of two anthropologists whose lives have been inextricably tied to the study of Tungus ethnic groups in Siberia: Shirokogorov Sergei Mikhailovich (1887-1939) and Ethel John Lindgren (1905-1988). Both conducted prolonged field research in Manchuria among different Tungusic peoples, accumulating a unique archive of photographs depicting portraits of informants, scenes of everyday life of the local population, as well as different landscapes. With only 15 years apart, the photographs are not only a dialogue of two anthropologists and their vision of Tungusic culture, but also a dialogue between two different anthropological traditions: Russian and British.

This digital exhibition mirrors that which was on display at the St. Petersburg Geographic Society. In addition, there was a screening of the first documentary film on the Reindeer-Tungus: "The Reindeer Tungus of Manchuria" (60 minutes, black and white, silent), shot by Ethel John Lindgren and her husband, Oscar Mamen, in Manchuria in 1932.