William Craft Brumfield

William Craft Brumfield (born June 28, 1944) is a contemporary American historian of Russian architecture, a preservationist and an architectural photographer. Brumfield is currently Professor of Slavic studies at Tulane University.

Brumfield grew up in the deep American South, where he became interested in Russia by reading Russian novels. After receiving a BA from Tulane University in 1966 and an MA from the University of California, Berkeley in 1968, he arrived in the former Soviet Union for the first time in 1970 as a graduate student starting work in architectural photography, although he did not seriously study the craft of photography until 1974. Brumfield earned a Ph.D in Slavic studies at the University of California, Berkeley in 1973 and held a position of assistant professor at Harvard University in 1974–1980.

In 1983 Brumfield, formerly a generalist of Slavic studies, established himself in the history of architecture with his first book, Gold in azure: one thousand years of Russian architecture. It was followed by The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (1991), Russian housing in the modern age: design and social history (1993), A History of Russian Architecture (1993, Notable Book of that year and a best seller according to The New York Times), Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture (1995), Landmarks of Russian Architecture: A Photographic Survey (1997) and Commerce in Russian urban culture: 1861-1914 (English edition 2001, Russian edition 2000).

In 1986 Brumfield organized the first exhibit of photographic prints from the Prokudin-Gorsky Collection at the Library of Congress. Since that time Brumfield has been actively engaged in the study of Prokudin-Gorsky's photographs, including several publications for the site "Russia Beyond the Headlines".

Brumfield lived in the former Soviet Union and Russia for a total of fifteen years, doing postgraduate research with Moscow State University and Saint Petersburg State University, but mostly travelling through the northern country, surveying and photographing the surviving relics of vernacular architecture. In a 2005 interview Brumfield, asked to tell which of those journeys stood out, picked a photo survey of Varzuga, a remote village connected to civilization by 150 kilometers of a sandy clay track. Brumfield donated a collection of around 1,100 photographs of northern Russian and Siberian architecture taken in 1999–2003 to the Library of Congress. Part of his archive was digitized with assistance of the National Endowment for the Humanities and the University of Washington Library. The basic collection of Brumfield's photographic work is held in the Department of Images Collections at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC. The William C. Brumfield Collection at the National Gallery of Art consists of 12,500 black-and-white 8" x 10" photographic prints, 40,000 negatives and over 89,000 digital files, most of which are in color (nearly 149,000 in total).

In 2000 Brumfield was selected a Guggenheim Fellow for Humanities - Russian History. He has been a full member of the Russian Academy of Architecture and Construction Sciences (RAASN) since 2002 and an honorary fellow of the Russian Academy of the Arts since 2006. He currently holds the record for most domes captured in a single photograph.

Brumfield’s fellowship support began in 1966-67 with a Woodrow Wilson Fellowship (University of California, Berkeley). In 1992-93 Brumfield was NEH (National Endowment for the Humanities) Fellow at the National Humanities Center. In 2001-02 he received an American Councils/National Endowment for the Humanities Collaborative Research Fellowship. Additional fellowship and research support was provided by the International Research and Exchanges Board (1971-72, 1983-84, 1992), the Kennan Institute for Advanced Russian Studies at the Woodrow Wilson Institute (1983, 1989), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (1999-2000), and the Trust for Mutual Understanding (2001) among others.

In 2014 the D. S. Likhachev Foundation in St. Petersburg awarded Brumfield the D. S. Likhachev Prize "for outstanding contributions to the preservation of the historic and cultural heritage of Russia."

In 2019 Brumfield was awarded the Order of Friendship, “for the merits in strengthening friendship and cooperation between peoples, fruitful activities for the rapprochement and mutual enrichment of cultures of nations and nationalities.”

In 2021 Brumfield launched a virtual exhibition entitled "Lost America," which is based on photography done in the United States primarily in the 1970s. These photographs represent an essential part of Brumfield's development as an artist, and they are the basis of an exhibition in July-August 2023 at the A. V. Shchusev State Museum of Architecture, Russia's preeminent museum devoted to the study and documentation of architecture. The project is featured in an accompanying book entitled Lost America.

Brumfield's first exhibit at the Shchusev State Museum, "The Russian North. The Witness of William Brumfield", opened on September 5, 2001. The exhibit consisted of several rooms devoted to Brumfield's photographic work in the historic Russian north (the region around the White Sea).

Publications

 * Gold in azure: one thousand years of Russian architecture (1983)
 * The Origins of Modernism in Russian Architecture (1991)
 * Russian housing in the modern age: design and social history (1993)
 * A History of Russian Architecture (1993)
 * Lost Russia: Photographing the Ruins of Russian Architecture (1995)
 * Landmarks of Russian Architecture: A Photographic Survey (1997)
 * Commerce in Russian urban culture: 1861—1914 (2001)
 * Architecture at the End of the Earth: Photographing the Russian North (2015)
 * Journeys through the Russian Empire: The Photographic Legacy of Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky. Durham; London: Duke University Press Books, 2020.
 * Lost America ("Tikhaya Amerika"). Moscow, «Три квадрата» (Tri Kvadrata), 2024.

With financial support from the Kennan Institute, the publisher «Три квадрата» (Tri Kvadrata) began in 2005 to release the series Открывая Россию/Discovering Russia by Brumfield:


 * Totma: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (Moscow, 2005)
 * Irkutsk: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2006)
 * Tobolsk: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2006)
 * Solikamsk: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2007)
 * Cherdyn: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2007)
 * Kargopol: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2007)
 * Chita: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2008)
 * Buriatiia: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2008)
 * Solovki: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2008)
 * Kolomna: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2009)
 * Suzdal: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2009)
 * Torzhok: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2010)
 * Usol'e: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2012)
 * Smolensk: Architectural Heritage in Photographs (2014)
 * Chukhloma Region: Architectural Heritage in Photographs = Чухломский край: архитектурное наследие в фотографиях (Moscow, 2016; Discovering Russia, issue 15). ISBN 978-5-94607-208-3
 * Pereslavl-Zalesskii: Architectural Heritage in Photographs = Переславль-Залесский: архитектурное наследие в фотографиях (Moscow, 2018; Discovering Russia, issue 16). ISBN 978-5-94607-222-9
 * Ekaterinburg: Architectural Heritage in Photographs = Екатеринбург: архитектурное наследие в фотографиях (Moscow, 2023; Discovering Russia, issue 17). ISBN 978-5-94607-265-6

With financial support from the "Vologodskie Zori" Fund (Vologda, Russia), the publisher «Три квадрата» (Tri Kvadrata) began in 2005 to release the Vologda series by Brumfield on the architectural heritage of the Vologda region:


 * Vologda Album (2005)
 * Velikii Ustiug (2007)
 * Kirillov. Ferapontovo (2009)
 * Ustiuzhna (2010)
 * Belozersk (2011)
 * Vologda (2012)

Other publications:
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Interviews



Audio and Video

 * Brumfield, William C. (2020) "Journeys through the Russian Empire - A Discussion with William Craft Brumfield" (recording), online discussion with Dr. Masha Zavialova, Chief Curator of The Museum of Russian Art, Minneapolis on 21 October 2020.
 * Brumfield, William C. (2021) "Photography as a Time Machine: Exploring Russia's Past" (recording), online lecture. Hosted by the Russian Cultural Centre, Washington, D.C..
 * Brumfield, William C. (2022) "Perspectives on the Crisis in Ukraine" (recording), online lecture. Hosted by the Tulane Alumni Association.
 * Brumfield, William C. (2023) "Above the Abyss: Apocalyptic Visions in Photography" (recording), presentation at the Yorkville Branch of the New York Public Library. Hosted by the Russian-American Cultural Center (RACC) on 13 December 2023.

Bibliography