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War in the Focus of the Lens

An exhibition of works by military photojournalist Anatoly Arkhipov “War in the focus of the lens. 1941-1945 " was opened in exhibition and excursion center “People’s House”. The exhibition is dedicated to the 75th anniversary of the Victory in the Great Patriotic War.

This war is farther and farther in history, fewer and fewer living witnesses remain, and therefore the photographs of the war years acquire more and more value over the years. What could be truer and more eloquent than the war memories of a person who went through it? What can more vividly convey pain and fear, love and hate, despair and hope than the footage taken by his camera? Together with the front-line correspondent Anatoly Arkhipov, we will walk a long road of fierce battles, we will survive the events of those terrible years, we will remember at what cost freedom was returned to the Country.

Anatoly Arkhipov went through the entire war, and in 1945 he shouted defeated Berlin. He was not just a witness to the war: he took part in it along with ordinary soldiers, armed not with a machine gun, but with a “Leica” and a notebook. This is probably why there is no detachment of the observer in his photographs. They contain the blood and smoke of war, its pain and bitterness.

His name was almost forgotten. Many of his photographs were published and replicated without indicating the author's name and attributed to other photographers. Thanks to the son of a photojournalist, a large family archive of negatives has been preserved. Part of the military archive will be presented at the exhibition.

War photographs are also pages of a photojournalist's combat biography. By them one can judge where, when, on what front, in what battle the correspondent was. He, like many war correspondents, had to solve the most difficult tasks: it was not enough just to shoot a frame, the photos had to be developed in the field, then somehow transferred to the newspaper.

The photographs presented at the exhibition, different in content, were taken under various circumstances of combat life: soldiers on the battlefield and in the hour of calm, in reconnaissance and at rest, in combat patrol and on the march. Land engulfed in fire, pitted with craters from explosions of mines and shells, cities turned into ruins. In moments of respite, the soldiers watch an amateur performance. Pictures of the last days of the war: the streets of defeated Berlin, smoking boxes of broken buildings, riddled with bullets from the Reichstag columns. Reminding about the war, they now appeal for the preservation of peace on Earth.

The exhibition will run until September 6, 2020. We invite all residents and guests of the stanitsa Vyoshenskaya to see these unique photographs.

When visiting the "People's House", you must have a protective mask and maintain social distance.

Irina Koveshnikova