from Hacker News

Onfim's world: Child artists in history

by benbreen on 5/15/25, 4:43 PM with 7 comments

• by lbeckman314 on 5/15/25, 6:10 PM

  > "[His drawings] force us to see childhood not as something that takes place in an eternal present, but as something with as deep a history as anything else that is a central part of what it is to be human."

  Absolutely love rediscovering Onfim's drawings thank you for submitting this.

  Cool site from with more birchbark records: https://web.archive.org/web/20250114034538/https://gramoty.r...

  Previous discussion (of Onfim's Wikipedia): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23089343

• by pavel_lishin on 5/15/25, 7:54 PM

  > For every unique survival like these, there are many millions that are lost. Children are continually making creative marks (as any parent with young kids knows all too well — cleaning them up has been a central preoccupation of my life over the past couple years).

  When mine started producing art in large amounts, as children are wont to do, I started photographing them all and putting them into an album to preserve them, instead of being buried under mountains of papers.

  I hope some day in the future, my kid will be able to go through the artwork and get something neat out of it.

• by lovegrenoble on 5/15/25, 5:59 PM

  Nice. Novgorod is a gem for those who are into history and culture, sometimes they call it Russia Florence. I wish one day I could visit it.

• by jayrot on 5/15/25, 5:40 PM

  If you've got 12 minutes to spare, I highly recommend this video about Onfim by Trey the Explainer. [https://youtu.be/H_nT6EFUZmI?si=RcFJeGjzcjkoVlh8]

  But only if you wish to experience sonder.

• by macintux on 5/15/25, 7:01 PM

  Related from a month ago, including discussion of this post's submission at the time.

  https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=43706037