Social and cultural sphere of Russia at the beginning of the 1880th – the middle of the 1890th in the reflection of photo documents

The article deals with the characteristics of the historiographic study of the visual documents as a historical source. There is presented the classification of the extensional quantitative layer of the photo documents reflecting the development of the social and cultural sphere of Russia in the reign period of Alexander III. There is conducted the analysis, there is concluded about the representativeness of the documents revealing the concrete historical period and saving the historical memory.