Baltermants, Dmitri.

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Description

'Tchaikovsky'. 1945, printed later
287 by 209mm

Silver Print (287 x 209mm.), signed and titled 'Chaikovsky...Germany 1945' by the photographer in ink on the reverse, ruled for reproduction

Provenance

Gift of the photographer to Colin Osman. Acquired from Osman's collection by the present owner.

Literature

D. Baltermants, ‘Dmitriy Baltermants: photographs from World War II’, Creative Camera, March 1975, pp. 82-87, this print reproduced as 'Germany 1945', p. 82.
T.H. Von Laue & A. Von Laue, Faces of a Nation: The Rise and Fall of the Soviet Union, 1917-1991; Photographs by Dmitri Baltermants, another print of this image illustrated p. 92.

Catalogue Note

Tatiana Baltermants, the photographer's daughter, described the subject thus: "...a group of Russian soldiers standing in the shattered living room of a ruined house are gathered around a miraculously unharmed upright piano, listening to a soldier playing. It is a moment of calm toward the end of a war that had destroyed twenty million people in Baltermants's country" (Von Laue, p. xiv).