Career
Baltermants planned to become a math teacher in a Military Academy, but he fell in love with photography and began a career in the field of photojournalism in 1939. Apprenticed to Vladimir Musinov, he became an official Kremlin photographer, worked for the daily Izvestia and was picture editor of the popular magazine Ogonyok.
During World War II, Baltermants covered the battle of Stalingrad, and the battles of the Red Army in Russia and Ukraine. He was twice wounded.
Just like his fellow photographers covering the Red Army during the war, Baltermants' images were censored by Soviet authorities because of irritating perspectives or works that otherwise weren't likely to boost morale. Some of his most captivating photos were suppressed, and became public much later, in the 1960s. His work gained attention in the West where it was distributed by the Sovfoto agency.
Grief
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One of the more famous Baltermants images, titled "Grief", depicts a 1942 Nazi massacre of Jews in the Crimean city of Kerch. It shows the despair of village women as they search for the bodies of their loved ones. A powerful oversaturated sky above, burnt in during the printing of the photo, makes the image even more dramatic.
