This article analyzes ethnographic photography as a method for studying traditional dwellings. The author examines the evolution of visual recording of dwellings from the late 19th to early 21st centuries. The paper offers a periodization of the development of ethnographic photography and traces the history of the formation of museum photo archives as fundamental sources for studying the material culture of an ethnic group. The transformation of the expeditionary method from the first attempts at visual documentation to the systematic scientific recording of the traditional Belarusian dwelling is analyzed. Based on an analysis of archival materials from museums and the photo archive of the Institute of Art History, Ethnography, and Folklore of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus, the role of photography as a means of semiotic modeling of the interior space of a dwelling is revealed. The article demonstrates how museum systematization transformed expeditionary photographs into structured museum photo archives, allowing contemporary researchers to reconstruct the spatial representations and social characteristics of the traditional dwelling.

1. Gromov G. G. Methodology of ethnographic expeditions. Moscow, University Publishing House, 1966. 107 p. (in Russian).

2. Anthropology and Photography 1860–1920. London, Yale University Press in Association with the Royal Anthropological Institute, 1997. 275 p.

3. Abilova R. O. The main directions of source study work with photographic documents from museum collections in modern Russian historiography. Filologiya i kultura. Istoricheskie nauki = Philology and Culture. Historical Sciences, 2015, no. 2 (40), pp. 287–292 (in Russian).

4. Soboleva E. S. Ilustrative museum collections as an ethnographic source (using the example of the Indonesian MAE collection). Sbornik Muzeya antropologii i etnografii = Collection of the Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography, 2000, vol. 48, pp. 190–195 (in Russian).

5. Tolmacheva E. B. Photography as an ethnographic source: based on materials from the photo collection of the Peter the Great Museum of Anthropology and Ethnography (Kunstkamera) of the Russian Academy of Sciences. Abstract of D. Sc. diss. St. Petersburg, 2011. 246 p. (in Russian).

6. Online project “Collection of photographs of the Russian Ethnographic Museum”. Available at: https://www.ethnomuseum.ru/collections/collection/sobranie-fotografij/ (accessed 11.02.2026) (in Russian).

7. Archives of the Russian Ethnographic Museum (AREM), coll. 1, aids 2, fol. 583 (in Russian).

8. Archives of the Russian Ethnographic Museum (AREM), coll. 1, aids 2, fol. 352 (in Russian).

9. Serbov I. A. Trips to Polesie in 1911 and 1912. Vilna, North-West Separate Imperial Russian Geographical Islands, 1914. 51 p. (in Russian).

10. Lebedeva N. І. Dwelling and outbuildings of the Byelorussian SSR: Mozyr and Bobruisk districts along the left bank of the Pripyat and its tributaries: materials of the 1927 expedition, iss. 1. Moscow, 1929. 81 p. (in Russian).

11. Haruzin A. Slavic dwellings in the Northwestern region: from materials on the history of the development of Slavic dwellings. Vilna, Typographical Society of N. Mats and Co., 1907. 341 p. (in Russian).

12. Blomkvist E. E. Peasant buildings of Russians, Ukrainians and Belarusians (settlements, dwellings and farm buildings). Vostochnoslavyanskij etnograficheskij sbornik = East Slavic Ethnographic Collection. Proceedings of the N. N. Miklouho-Maclay Institute of Ethnography. New Series. USSR Academy of Sciences. Moscow, 1956, vol. 31. 458 p. (in Russian).

13. Lokotko A. I. Belarusian folk architecture: Mid 19th – 20th centuries. Minsk, Navuka i technika Publ., 1991. 287 p. (in Russian).

14. Sergachev S. A. Belarusian folk architecture. Minsk, Uradjai Publ., 1992. 255 p. (in Russian).

15. Labacheўskaya V. A. (ed). The Belarusians in the photos by Isaac Serbau = Baltarusiai Isako Serbovo metu fotografijose. Minsk, Belarus. Encycl. Name P. Brovka Publ., 2012. 456 p. (in Belarusian).

16. Gruntoў S. U. Forgotten expedition of 1923: for the release of academic ethnography in Belarus: album-manography. Minsk, Belaruskaya Navuka Publ., 2023. 216 p. (in Belarusian).

17. Archives of the Russian Ethnographic Museum (AREM), coll. 1, aids 2, fol. 573 (in Russian).

18. Archives of the Russian Ethnographic Museum (AREM), coll. 1, aids 2, fol. 578 (in Russian).

19. Photo archives of the Institute of Cultural Studies, Ethnagraphy and Folklore of the National Academy of Sciences of Belarus. Photo no. 39. Expeditions in Lyuban district, Minsk region, 1949 (in Russian).

20. Archives of the Belarusian State Museum of Folk Architecture and Life. Book 2. Information on scientific trips to the Republic of Belarus (05.09.1977 – 25.12.1977) (in Belarusian).