CORY REYNOLDS | DATE 11/22/2020

The radical photojournalism of Galina Sanko in 'The New Woman Behind the Camera'

Russian photojournalist Galina Sanko's iconic 1943 combat photograph, "During the Attack," is reproduced from The New Woman Behind the Camera, one of our top 2020 Holiday Gift suggestions for photo lovers, published in advance of a major 2021 exhibition at the National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC, and the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York. One of only a few women who served as war correspondents during World War II, Sanko covered the Eastern Front, photographing battles in Kursk, Moscow and Stalingrad, as well as the Siege of Leningrad in 1944. "Sanko also photographed war’s impact on people and the landscape," Kara Felt writes in the rich Biography section of the book. "Her images show soldiers conversing with one another and writing letters home, dead and wounded combatants, grief-stricken mothers, displaced civilians returning home, farmers praying for their dead, and children at Petrozavodsk—a camp in which Russians were interned by the Finns. Taken at close range, Sanko’s war pictures capture the brutality of armed conflict."

ABOVE: Galina Sanko, "During an Attack," 1943, gelatin silver print, printed c. 1960s, 15.7 × 24.3 cm (6 3/16 × 9 9/16 in.), Robert Koch Gallery