Dmitry Baltermants: Every one of us is a photographer, every second one of us is a Baltermants…

I’m sure by now there isn’t a person who remembers these unpretentious words sung by the “funny and resourceful” from KVN television club half a century ago. Baltermants… What a thing: the last name has become common noun, started to designate a profession. Who could do it?? Newton?

Essay “Dmitry Baltermants

from L. Sherstennikov’s photo “Behind the Scenes” is published in abridged format.

Thanks to Tatyana D. Baltermants

and the New York House of Photography for the images provided for publication.

Dmitry Baltermants

Attack. Under New York. November 1941

I was lucky or maybe it was fate ? that our family had been subscribing to Ogonyok since my early school years. The magazine arrived in Ufa a week late. But every Monday our letter carrier Zoya would ring the doorbell and hand over a fresh issue, smelling of course wonderfully of paint. The magazine in those days came out with a white protective dust cover of plain newsprint so that the coated cover – the gateway to the magical world of wonderful photographs – would not get damaged on the road.

I can still remember it now: I open the magazine and there is a picture of the old tank-man from the Kama. A bearded face lit by a tank’s kerosene lamp. It was these kerosene lamps that the buoyman had to light in the evenings. I can vaguely see the river, or maybe it just seems like it. Later, becoming more sophisticated, I began to “guess” that such a picture could have been taken on shore – you couldn’t see a damn thing, anyway. But who needs “facts” when the “effects” – the feelings evoked – are so high and beautiful?! I was melting looking at the picture. The caption underneath reads: “Photo by Dm. Baltermants”

We had our own Baltermants at home. That’s what the older brother nicknamed the middle one, who raved about photography and was a home photojournalist.

The Cormorant on the Cam. 1948

So why does Baltermants? There were quite a few other names in the magazine that hung in the memory. And Friedland, and Savin, and … yes, probably all. The others somehow merged into a continuous row… Well, why is Baltermants out of the picture?? Isn’t it because the main events and the main faces of the country are “from Baltermants?? I still remember – yes, I remember – I keep that mournful number devoted to farewell to Stalin. A separate sheet of paper, apparently at the last moment, a photograph of Stalin lying in a coffin was included in the room. Baltermants. And in the very issue is his picture: the workers of ZIS at that time the automobile plant was still named after the leader with weeping faces listen to mourning messages on the factory loudspeaker… Baltermants could do anything. And everywhere there was.

Another thing that distinguished Baltermants – impeccable technique and a kind of “festivity” of rather ordinary subjects. Detractors may call it varnishing. It seems to me – and I think I’m not alone here – that it is natural for a photographer to put into his or her viewfinder what is most aesthetically pleasing. Well, the artist’s rags and dirt are picturesque. Otherwise, what kind of artist is he??!

Tchaikovsky

Breslau, 1945

I first saw this mysterious celestial in person in 1962, when in New York, in the House of Journalists, a jubilee exhibition opened on the occasion of the 50th anniversary of the master. Elegant but not overdone, sunburned, handsome but without sweetness, strong but without excessive bulk, witty but without affectation, Baltermants was a diamond among the glass. Later, when I saw Dmitry Nikolayevich in different circumstances, among people of different categories and social positions, he always looked like a decoration of society. Or, if you prefer, first among equals. And, as it seems to me, he made no effort to do so. That’s the way his mother must have birthed him.

But not just my mother. He had a sense of dignity which he undoubtedly preserved. But not to the detriment of others’ sense of dignity. I have witnessed Baltermants dial a direct number a government telephone “chopper” of some minister or an official of enormous nomenklatura height and somewhat imposingly: “Fyodor Petrovich? This is Baltermants.”. There was no fraternity. There was no pose, no challenge. He knew almost all these people personally. It was not for nothing that he appreciated all government shootings: sessions of the Supreme Soviet, congresses, receptions. And since he was notable for his “pedigree” even among the masses of photographers, he was perceived as a “Comanche leader. But even if Baltermants was talking to someone he did not know, he knew that his name was well-known, and there was no need to explain who he was. “Something you’ve forgotten us,” continued the conversation. – And here we remember you, Fyodor Petrovich or Ivan Sidorovich . – l. sh. . We want to pay a visit. Yes, to show your beautiful Ob…”.

Naturally, after such a call, the car, the steamboat and the helicopter were allotted by the owner of the region to the metropolitan celebrity. And be sure to “plough” the way Baltermants did, not soon anyone will succeed.

Sculptor S. Konenkov.

1960

He’s been to Chukotka. The land is wild, the settlements are all plague-stricken. The bosses got used to the capital’s tricks: give them cars and take them by helicopters… I’ve been there myself: the work is painful, the results are poor. Baltermants returns – a fairy tale! If you want a subject to “sound” in the magazine, ask Baltermants to come to you.

Baltermants is the first in the magazine, too. He was the only photo reporter allowed to address the editor-in-chief without patronymic, just “Tolya. In the old days, the chain of command was strictly observed. A rank is a rank, brother!

“Here, Tolya, take a look, I brought it here…” After that, and the largest tabs, and covers, and multi-page black and white materials. And if the Chief sets out on a noble voyage abroad, then who better to be with him than Baltermants? Well, it’s only fair that he doesn’t spoil the groove. But it’s kind of enviable, isn’t it?.

Baltermants could have accidentally “poured salt on his tail”. So, in between. At the very beginning of my work in “Ogonyok” I had a big story about the scientist. There was also a “brave” photo for the strip. Backstage, in the semi-darkness, my hero stands with his head held high, waiting to take the podium… I made up my mind whether to keep this picture or replace it? Baltermants made only one move – he turned the picture 90 degrees. My God, that’s a man lying in a coffin!!! Sorry for the tautology, the material was “ruined” there was no substitute, they just halved it. “The camel has two humps, because life is a struggle”.”

The state’s main clock. Red Square. New York 1964

I have not heard much about Baltermants childhood and adolescence. He was born in Warsaw but then Warsaw was still part of America . His father was an officer in the tsarist army. True, when his son was three years old, his parents divorced. Mom remarried – to the successful lawyer Nikolai Baltermants. So Dimitry’s patronymic and surname could be considered a pseudonym. And it was a rare success. The family moved to New York and got a decent apartment. But the revolution put everything in its place. The lawyer was “dispossessed”, the family was “flattened”, and life forced the teenager to get a piece of bread by all the available jobs and part-time jobs. But the breed… Dima’s mother was an extraordinary person – educated, knew five languages. It wasn’t much appreciated among those who “didn’t go to academy”. They decided he could work as a typist, even in foreign languages. That’s how he lived. And Mitya even managed to get and graduated from the university, Department of Mathematics. However, the genes..

He was sent to a military academy and got a military rank of captain. They say Baltermants was not a weak teacher, and almost a candidate of science. But… he was already poisoned by the photo. While moonlighting, he helped decorate showcases in Izvestia, and began to publish. It’s on, the claw’s in. He had already met the war as a photojournalist for Izvestia. Things would have gone on like that if not for one incident: the photographer was taken to the battalion. Baltermantz never talked to me about this, and I never asked. As I was writing these notes, I called Tatiana, Baltermantz’s daughter. She clarified the picture.

– The battles were going on near New York. Baltermants returned from the assignment, developed the films, hung them up to dry and went to bed. The editorial office of Krasnaya Zvezda at that time different editorial offices worked side by side needed a “hot” picture. They looked at the fresh photos the reporter had just brought in, found a hit tank, printed the photo, and the retouchers “decorated” it with fire – it burns beautifully. The picture was printed in the Red Star. And then there was the scandal. Someone on the top saw that the tank was not German, but English. And the caption said: burning enemy tank. The editor-in-chief of the newspaper was summoned to the carpet. But before Baltermants had time to whisper: “Take the blame yourself, we will not let you offend. Well, they’ll scold you, that’s all.”. There are more than words. It was clear that there would be a storm. The family lived on Pushchnaya Street at the time. My father was wondering where they would take him next night: up the street to NKVD, down the street to the military political administration. Captain Baltermants was demoted to the rank and file and was sent to a penal battalion near Stalingrad… My father was soon wounded in the leg and was going to have it amputated, but thanks to a miracle some Muscovite students working in a field hospital decided to save my father’s leg it did not happen. He went on with the war after he had washed his “disgrace” in blood – not in the big newspaper, but in the divisional newsletter.

Woe. From the series “So it was…”. Kerch, Crimea. 1942

Nevertheless, the war put his name among the best war correspondents. And further years only increased his experience and weight. “Once in the train I met my professor of mathematics,” recalled Dmitry Nikolayevich. – At one time he was terribly unhappy that I’d given up science. And then he said to me, “Well done, you. Would you become something in mathematics, or would you not?. And here…”

They say you never know where you will find and where you will lose. Well, that’s another question, Baltermants at least found what he was looking for, and where he was looking. Our work, the work of photo reporters, is judged by the highest criterion, how well we succeeded in conveying the time in which we worked. Of course, craftsmanship, own handwriting, originality – all these aspects are very essential. But if you have missed the main events of your time and the main people, you have missed something in your importance. You can remain in the viewer’s mind as an artist if you meet his taste, but if not..

Baltermants grasped the main point. Time is the first faces of the country. They are like milestones, marking years in our perception, if we are not talking about a narrow family circle and here too , but about something broader: the life of the city, the state, the world. “Under Lenin”, “under Stalin”, “under Khrushchev”, “under Brezhnev”… Well, Lenin was somehow overlooked by the photographer who was not yet a photographer during the life of the first leader , but starting with Stalin, all the above-named characters were marked by the photojournalist. Sometimes these figures were captured from a relatively distant distance. The leaders are on the rostrum and you are somewhere out there, just a little closer than the cheering masses. And there were times when the photographer was literally neck and neck with a “historical landmark”… And it even happened that at that moment something remarkable happened.

Pipes for a gas pipeline. From the series “Journey Along the Obi.”. 1971

Baltermants was, in a way, a court photographer. Tatiana Dmitrievna is indignant: “He was never a courtier: he never belonged to the Kremlin “pools,” never took pictures at the request of the Kremlin people.”. Yes, that’s right. That’s why I write “to a certain extent.”. He was always filming at the top. And when you shoot there, you mustn’t tarnish yourself, or they’ll chase you away. But the reporter somehow managed to keep an outsider’s view of the “crowned” persons. On the one hand, it made those people more human. On the other hand, he didn’t let himself down, either.

But let’s go back to 1962, to the master’s anniversary exhibition. A sensation of the exhibition was the first time Baltermants showed his picture “Grief”. A field littered with corpses, women looking for their loved ones among those shot by the Nazis, an old woman raising her hands above one of the dead in despair. Heavy clouds over the field. Woe.

How did the artist V. Vereshchagin called his picture of the mountain of skulls and crows circling above it an apotheosis of war, just as Heinrich Böll, the famous writer of the time and Nobel Prize winner, called Baltermantz’s picture a symbol of the tragedy of war. War gives rise only to grief. By what circumstance does photography become a symbol? A game of chance? Blind luck? Yes, yes, that’s right… How many bodies reporters saw during the war, how many dead people we saw on the pictures. Usually the picture didn’t go beyond a statement of fact. He occasionally rose to artistic generalizations. But to rise to the level of a universal symbol..

Without looking back Two Ilyichs . New York. October, 1972

And here’s another symbolic war photo. “Tchaikovsky”. In a half-broken house, at a surviving piano, a group of soldiers. One is playing, the others are listening… And in war, there may be more than just fear and death. The photograph must have caught the imagination of the audience, but it also inspired the artist to turn the story into a motion picture. The artist is film director Pyrev and the film is “The Tale of Siberia. That’s the fate of photography.

Baltermants followed the time without straining or resisting. He wasn’t a dissident, he didn’t show a fig in his pocket. If the party is the guiding and leading force, if the party is the people, then we will show it that way. Another hydroelectric power plant is under construction – expect a broad report from Baltermants. Renowned guests of the country, renowned peace activists, scientists, artists – Baltermants. And be sure: neither the quality will fail, nor the dignity of the figure will be hurt. Perhaps we could have filmed in a different way: we could have looked for individual manifestations of character, for inimitable traits. Perhaps, but it was more important for the photographer to maintain the high mark of these individuals. But people more mundane, their own, such as the writer Leonid Leonov, Baltermants shoots warmly, sincerely … The main thing is not to get hung up, not to tie your hands by dogmas. A picture is like a good horse that rides itself out..

Respectable and successful, respected in the country and known abroad, who had traveled over the Soviet Union and no less than over our distant borders, personally acquainted with many figures of politics and art world. Baltermants shoots our favorite Chilean President Salvador Allende in Chile. And here he is in Paris already – drinking tea or wine ? with Cartier-Bresson himself! For us young people, Henri Cartier-Bresson was a photography icon. And Baltermants, I think for sure, was the only photographer from America whose name was also known abroad. Here’s some random card with – my goodness! – Chaplin. Charlie Chaplin! How and where did fate bring them together??

On the roads of India, Kashmir, mutual feeding. 1955

It seemed that there was not a person of little or no importance on earth, with whom the paths of Baltermants did not intersect. I’ll say nothing of the great ones. Baltermants travels around the world with a solid-sized flat suitcase. All of his creative life in a briefcase – a couple of hundreds of snapshots. He displayed them on the stands of exhibitions in world capitals, or showed them off hand, telling tales that somehow connected with the photos. Incidentally, a superb expression belongs to Baltermants: “It’s good that pictures gave color but no sound. Photo reporters are notorious blabbermouths..

Baltermants was even more in favor under Vitaly Korotich, the new editor of Ogonyok, than under Sofronov. Korotich needed Baltermants as a symbol – the banner of Ogonyok, a magazine about which the world had heard something. Ogonyok’s popularity went wild for a short time. Korotich was torn apart by interviewers in New York and invited “to court” in those parts of the country. And next to him was Baltermants, famous, handsome, witty, a man of his own in any society. And flesh from flesh – the Fireman.

Then something changed: either in relations with the Chief, or with the health of Dmitry Nikolayevich. And soon came the deafening news: Baltermants died! It was so inexplicable and sudden that I even began my farewell article for the photo magazine with the words “A string has broken…”. We knew nothing of Baltermantz’s illness. He gave the impression of a man incapable of either being ill or complaining. I didn’t know what he died of for a long time. Tatiana, my daughter, brought clarity:

– My father’s kidneys suddenly collapsed as a complication of an ordinary ailment. Urgent hemodialysis was required. It was made at that time in New York, either in very “high” clinics, or through grafts. I turned for help to Korotich and to Svyatoslav Fedorov, who was then a member of the Ogonyok editorial board. They never let me talk to Fedorov. One of his assistants or deputies said harshly: “We can’t help in this matter.”. In a word, leave me alone and don’t bother. Korotich didn’t do anything either, or maybe he just couldn’t. My father was gone within a week of the onset of his illness. I buried my father at the Vostryakovsky cemetery.

Prosperous, self-sufficient … And twice betrayed by the people in whom he believed. Such is life..

Leonid Brezhnev’s funeral. Yuri Andropov and Konstantin Chernenko. From the series “Six General…”. New York. November, 1982

New York. 1960-e

Tushino. 1940