2016.46.1
Grief, Kerch, Crimea
Artist
Dmitri Baltermants
(Warsaw, Poland, 5/13/1912 - 6/11/1990, Moscow, Russia)
Title
Grief, Kerch, Crimea
Creation Date
1/1942 (printed 2003)
Century
20th century
Dimensions
16 x 20 in. (41 x 51 cm)
Classification
Photographs
Creation Place
North America, United States
Medium and Support
gelatin silver print on paper
Credit Line
Gift of Jon and Nicole Ungar
Copyright
This artwork may be under copyright. For further information, please consult the Museum’s
Copyright Terms and Conditions.
Accession Number
2016.46.1
This searing image by the Soviet photojournalist Dmitri Baltermants captures the mourning family members of those massacred during the 1941 Nazi-German occupation of Kerch, a strategically important port city in eastern Crimea. The image was part of a series published in the Soviet press in 1942 to rouse the local population—which included Ukrainians, Russians, Tatars, and a sizeable Jewish population—to fight against the brutal invaders. Yet, the original story that accompanied the photograph simultaneously revealed and obscured the complexity of these atrocities. Even as the image documented the murder of Jewish victims, the text conformed to official Soviet narratives about the war and effectively erased evidence of the unfolding Holocaust.
In light of the 2014 Crimean crisis and Russia’s ongoing invasion of Ukraine, Baltermants’s photographs, full of pathos and pain, remind us of the long history of conflict in the region, the terrible toll on its inhabitants, and the importance of the press in bearing witness to wartime violence. But they also remind us to approach images critically as we read news coverage—to think carefully about what we are seeing (or not seeing), and to question how the content is being framed by text, and to what possible end.
- Page Herrlinger
Associate Professor of History
Chair of the Russian Department
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