Galina Sanko
Galina Sanko (Russian: Галина Захаровна Санько) (1904–1981) was a Soviet photographer who worked as a photojournalist and was one of only five women who served as a war photographer during
Biography
Galina Zakharovna Sanko was born in 1904
After the persecution of her husband in 1938, Sanko dedicated her life to photography. When the war broke out, she asked to go to the front as a war correspondent.[3] Initially, Sanko trained as a nurse and then studied driving and auto mechanics.[4] She bandaged the wounded and once she had proved her fitness for battle[3] was allowed as
one of only five women who served as war photographers.
At the end of the war, Sanko worked for the magazine Ogoniok (Russian: Огонек)[1] but until the 1960s, her work was banned and hidden in an archive. Accused of distorting the truth, with her photographs of the liberation of the Petrozavodsk camp, Sanko was exonerated when 20 years after the war, she returned to the Republic of Karelia and found one of the children she had photographed in the camp. After publishing "Claudia 20 years later", her archive was opened in 1966[2] and Sanko participated in many photographic exhibitions at home and abroad. She was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Sanko died in Moscow in 1981.[1]
Legacy
At least one of her images, "Prisoners of Fascism" was used as evidence in the Nuremberg trials.[5] In 1966, at the international exhibition "Interpressphoto-66" of Moscow, Sanko received gold medals for each of her photos "Prisoners of Fascism" and "Twenty Years Later". Two years later, at a Parisian exhibition, her photographs of the liberation of Petrozavodsk received the Grand Prize.[3] In 1981, Sanko was awarded the title "Honorary Citizen of the City of Gdov" for her photographs documenting the devastation of the city in 1944 and its liberation from Nazi occupation.[5]
Sanko's gift was not to photograph the war, but the results of the battle upon the soldiers themselves, the landscape, or non-combatants. Though mostly unknown in the West, Soviet photographers and photojournalists works began to make their way out from behind the Iron Curtain in the 1990s. In 1996, Christie's in New York sold 279 prints from 24 photographers, including Sanko, to a collector in San Francisco. Two of Sanko's photographs, one showing boots on fallen, snow-covered German soldiers and another "Spring in the Ukraine" (1943), showed the idyllic countryside in which a mortally wounded German soldier lay in grass with his helmet, were described in detail in a piece published in The New York Times.[6]
References
Citations
Bibliography
- Евангели, Александр, ed. (2016). "Галина Санько". Photographer RU (in Russian). Moscow, Russia. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- Lin, Arina (2015). "Галина Санько" [Galina Sanko]. Museum Art Russia (in Russian). Moscow, Russia: Музей Органической Культуры (Museum of Organic Culture). Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- Loke, Margarett (12 July 1996). "Inside Photography". The New York Times. New York City. Archived from the original on 8 March 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
- Roth, Mitchel P.; Olson, James Stuart (1997). Historical Dictionary of War Journalism. Westport, Connecticut: Greenwood Publishing Group. ISBN 978-0-313-29171-5.
- Зайцева, В.С.; Кожокарь, Л.Т., Старшие научные сотрудники отдела хранения музейных фондов музея-заповедника (Senior Researchers of the archive of museum collections at the Battle of Stalingrad Museum) (2016). "Сталинградская легенда — фотокорреспондент на линии фронта" [Stalingrad legend – a photojournalist on the front line] (in Russian). Volgograd, Russia: Музей-заповедник "Сталинградская битва" (Battle of Stalingrad Museum). Archived from the original on 20 May 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2016.
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: CS1 maint: multiple names: authors list (link) - "Свобода со слезами на глазах" [Freedom with tears in his eyes] (in Russian). Gdov, Russia: Gdovskaya Zarya Gazeta. 2 March 2012. Archived from the original on 20 May 2016. Retrieved 20 May 2016.