Picturing Russian Empire offers a new way to approach the history of Russia as an empire and as a state located in a world characterized by a churning, dynamic exchange of people, ideas, and practices. It presents readers with a visual tour of the lands and peoples that constituted the Russian Empire and those that confronted it, defied it, accommodated to it, and shaped it at various times in more than a millennium of history.

Bringing together scholars and experts from across the world and from various disciplines, Picturing Russian Empire consistently raises big historical questions to stimulate readers to think about images as embedded in the diverse, lived worlds of the Russian empire. The authors challenge the reader to not only to see images as the creations of individuals, but as objects circulating among viewers in a variety of contexts, creating new impressions, meanings, and experiences.