ABSTRACT
In this chapter, the author argue that the transnational genre of survey photography in the entangled cultural context of the backward multi-ethnic villages and small towns of the provinces of the Russian and Austrian empires was a powerful tool for shaping identities, in both the analytical and practical dimensions. From its earliest history, the region of eastern Galicia, located at the crossroads of important trade routes, was a territory of ethnic and cultural diversity. The fashioning of the region's folklore at the Kolomyya and Ternopil exhibitions was part of a larger project of defining the distinctiveness of eastern Galicia's cultural heritage within the European context. A well-educated son of a Polish mother and of a Ruthenian priest, Shukhevych was one of the most distinguished intellectuals involved in the ethnographic research of the Hutsul region, pursued in collaboration with the Dzieduszycki Museum and the ethnographic section of the Shevchenko Society.
