Dmitri Baltermants, Soviet Photographer

When I went to Moscow in 1990, I really hoped to meet Dmitri Baltermants, whose series of war photographs ("Searching for Loved Ones", and "Grief") taken in the Kerch peninsula, Crimea, in 1942, had haunted me since I first saw them in Prague and in the book "The Russian War, 1941-1945" (J. Cape, London, 1978). I was hoping to purchase a signed print from the great photographer himself and to discuss his photographs.

I got to Moscow too late, as Baltermants died in 1990. I had written this poem in 1989. It was later included in a chapter I contributed to the book "Literatures of War", ed. R. Pine and E. Patten (2008).

Black Sea: Decomposition -

Searching for loved ones at Kerch, Spring 1942.

Those Russian war photographers

Witnessed the full horror:

Utter devastation, unbearable grief.

Dmitri Baltermants was one

Who photographed the effects of evil

And captured the stench of the squalid truth.

"War, above all, is Grief."

Loved ones  lie rotting, splayed out in the mud,

Melting flesh in the melting snow,

While mothers and widows

Wail in their anguish. Unspeakable misery.

The recognised corpse. The putrid child.

Like a scene from the Greek Civil War.

A mass grave is opened, the victims exhumed,

Displayed for identification.

Ancient agony in recent times.

The dark clouds complete the composition.

On the occasion of the opening of the Exhibition,

"150 Years of Photography", Manes Hall, Prague, 1.8.1989. 

What I didn't know at the time of writing the poem was that that the photograph had been altered in the darkroom. I found this item of information on Wikipedia:

"One of the more famous images, called "Grief"...shows the grief of village women as they search for the bodies of their loved ones. A powerful oversaturated sky above, burnt in during the printing of the photo, makes the image even more dramatic".

In the book "The Russian War", Baltermants is quoted as writing: "War, is, above all, grief. I photographed non-stop for years and I know that in all that time I produced only five or six real photographs. War is not for photography. If, heaven forbid, I had to photograph war again, I would do it quite differently. I agonise now at the thought of all the things that I did not photograph."

One wonders what dramatic effects he might have achieved with the help of Adobe Photoshop. As if the horrifying subject matter needed any dramatic enhancement.

From Time, 100 Photos, Grief