Dedicated to war photographers. The Land of Victory

An exhibition for the 70th Anniversary of the victory in the Great Patriotic War 1941-1945

This is the 7th exhibition on the Great Patriotic War that the Moscow House of Photography has presented to the public. For each exhibition, we focus on one aspect of the immense topic of «War and Photography.»

On the eve of the 70th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War we have decided to dedicate an exhibition to war photographers, who created a photographic chronicle of one of the most tragic periods of our country’s history.

Among thousands and thousands of photo correspondents from 62 countries, who participated in World War Two and worked at its various fronts, it is Soviet photographers that have left the sharpest witness accounts of those horrible events. They demonstrated unparalleled heroism in conditions when even adjusting the depth of field on a camera seemed both physically and morally impossible. It is no surprise that such works as Attack and Grief by Dmitri Baltermants have become the most succinct metaphor of the biggest tragedy of the 20th century.

It was impossible to highlight in this exhibition all those who had fought at the fronts of the Great Patriotic War with cameras in their hands. But all the heroes that are known to us have been placed on the Memorial Wall of Fame. We hope that the archivists, museum workers and all the others who will attend this exhibition or learn about it on the museum’s website (www.mamm-mdf.ru) will help us add new names to this Wall.

All the Moscow House of Photography’s archives dealing with the Great Patriotic War, as well as the archives of war photographers’ heirs with whom we have worked and been friends with for many years, will be available on a new website called Russia in Photo, to be launched in a few months.

The Moscow House of Photography has also come forward with an initiative to set up a memorial stone dedicated to all the photographers and cameramen who participated in the Great Patriotic War. We hope that this initiative will be supported by other archives and museums, and all those who are not indifferent to the history of our country. This memorial stone will hopefully be installed in Moscow, in the garden square opposite our museum in Ostozhenka. In Russia, where there are thousands of memorials dedicated to veterans of the Great Patriotic War, there is still no memorial to the photographers and cameramen who, with photo- or film cameras in their hands, accomplished feats on a daily basis creating the most important pages in the country’s photographic chronicle.