In 2024, the 80th anniversary of the formation of the Tyumen Region was celebrated. In a short period of time, this region has become the locomotive of the Russian economy from a remote province.

The Chronicles of the Tyumen Region photo comic is a project capable of showing history in a new format. The photographic heritage of the Tobolsk province and the Tyumen region as a whole is very fragmented, no one has collected it in a single publication space. The innovation of the project consists precisely in combining a large number of materials on various topics.

The non-profit Foundation "Cultural Heritage of Western Siberia" has a unique large-scale fund of photo archives about the region of recognized masters of photography from the 1940s to the 2000s, with copyright agreements for the use of works. The unique images taken in different periods of the region’s history can not only tell about the time, but also popularize the territory as having a rich historical and cultural heritage. The book will become an incentive to support the development of tourism activities in the region.

Just drawing attention to an illustration is not enough. To tell about an event, you need a narrative plot, and in our case, documentary facts. And the most suitable tool that can be used in this case is a photo mix. This is a universal genre: it is suitable for any subject, promotion of any information product. The photo mix gives the audience a unique feed. Photography and text are an ideal pair that can arouse interest not only among the younger generation, but also create serious interactive material for local historians, teachers and many others.

Today, the entire palette of figurative language is available to photography — from the language of artistic images and symbols to the language of document and mass communication. As part of the region’s anniversary, the project will become a visual encyclopedia of Western Siberia exploration.

The book and the website introduce the viewer to provincial photographers who captured the era of the XIX-XXI centuries, when the USSR state appeared and then disappeared on the map. Through photographs, it became possible to study the development of the region’s territory in recent history, and historical moments from earlier stages were reflected. Texts are placed under each picture of the book, which required considerable work to find the material and verify historical facts. As a result, we got the history of the region in illustrations in a format that is close to modern society, especially young people.

A website with facts, documents, and newspaper publications from different time periods of the region’s development complements the book, which contains links to interactive materials (QR codes).