From October of 1932 to January of 1933, Lotte Jacobi traveled through the Soviet Union. The trip, facilitated by the photo agencies Unionbild in Berlin and Soiuzfoto in Moscow, represents Jacobi's foray into photojournalism as she covered the effects of Soviet industrialization and modernization in these regions. She photographed workers, collective farmers, peasants, street traders, intellectuals, and political figures, starting in Moscow and Michurinsk and then in the socialist republics of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.
In her travels, Jacobi took several thousand photographs. The vast majority of these images were not printed until several years later when she worked with the University of New Hampshire Media Service Department to create a series of prints for display. This digital collection was primarily digitized from negative film and reflects the best access to these photographs. The metadata for this collection was created using Jacobi's personal notes along with her recollections as recorded by Gary Samson decades after her remarkable trip.
Lotte Jacobi's travel journal, kept during her six-month trip through USSR, contains approximations of Russian, Kyrgyz, Tajik, and Uzbek names, places, and other words often spelled phonetically by Jacobi in her native German and written in her looping Kurrentschrift – an old form of cursive script used in German speaking countries from the 16th century until the early 20th century. The handwriting, phonetic spellings of multiple languages, changed place names, and unfamiliar abbreviations within the journal made translation difficult. We are thankful to Mechthild von Tresckow for her expertise and patience in this endeavor.
Production Team
Project Advisor: Eleta Exline, Scholarly Communication Librarian
Project Advisor: Elizabeth Slomba, Special Collections Librarian
Production Coordinator: Sarah Stinson, Digital Collections Coordinator
Publishing Coordinator: Nikki Cogdill, Institutional Repository Coordinator
Image Coordinator: Rebecca Chasse, Library Photographic Curation Specialist
Lead Processing Technician: Katherine Hutchinson, Digital Collections Assistant
Metadata Assistant: Melissa Bauer, Digital Collections Assistant
Translation Assistant: Mechthild von Tresckow
