‘FACES OF A NATION’

Photos offer look at life in Soviet Union

For nearly five decades, Dmitri Baltermants (1912-1990) took photographs of everything from official parades to wars to everyday life inside the Soviet Union. For many of those years, he was an official photographer for the Kremlin.

During World War II, he covered the battle of Stalingrad and the battles of the Red Army in Russian and Ukraine. All of his works were filtered through official government channels, with many photographs not being seen publicly until years after they were taken.

He also worked for the Soviet government newspaper Izvestia and was picture editor for the magazine Ogonyok.

One of his most famous images, called “Grief,” depicts a 1942 massacre of Jews in the city of Kerch. It is one of 20 images in a collection titled “Faces of a Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union” that the L.P. Cline Gallery on Broad Street is showcasing through March 3.

Gallery owner Lynn Cline says Baltermants’ daughter, Tatyana, had 20 images from her father’s collection printed using the gelatin silver process and auctioned 25 portfolios in the mid-’90s. Cline purchased the one he now has on display.

“There were 25 sets made, and we managed to get No. 15 at an auction,” Cline says. “We’ve never shown them, but now just seemed like a good time.”

Cline specializes in Russian art, traveling to the area on buying trips two or three times a year. Some of the winning bidders of the portfolios have sold off individual photos over the years for tens of thousands of dollars, he says.

Contact Barry Courter at bcourter@timesfreepress.com or 423-7576354.

PHOTOS BY DMITRI BALTERMANTS “By late 1944 the Red Army had repelled the Germans from Soviet soil. The Soviets took the offensive, driving the Germans across Poland in a final push toward Berlin and German surrender, a goal they attained within six months. The crossing of the...

“By the end of November 1941 the Germans had already suffered 250,000 casualties in Russia. In December the Russians began their counterattack. When first published, Baltermants’ photo of charging soldiers was criticized as it depicted “half-a-man,”...

“One of Baltermants’ great socialist-realist photographs, a reverent line of devoted Soviets winds snakelike toward Lenin’s tomb on a bitter winter afternoon,” Cline says.

“In a moment of calm toward the end of a war that claimed over 27 million lives, a group of Soviet troops is shown listening to music played on a piano, the only survivor in a ruined house,” says Cline.