James Hill: Russian Veterans

Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer James Hill, who has lived and worked in Russia since the 1990s, went to Gorky Park on Victory Day for four consecutive years and photographed over 500 veterans in a makeshift studio he built. 15 of the pictures will be on display at this exhibition to mark the 70th anniversary of the end of the Second World War. The photographs were collected in a beautifully produced book “Victory Day”, with the financial support of the British Council, which won the ‘Book of the Year’ Prize at the Moscow International Book Fair. In October 2013 ten of the portraits were acquired by the State Pushkin Museum of Fine Arts in Moscow for its permanent collection. The short film by Vyacheslav Sachkov of the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography, documenting the creation of the portraits, will be screened as part of the exhibition.

James Hill is a leading photographer and photojournalist and his images have won many of photography’s most important prizes including World Press Photo, the Pulitzer Prize, the Visa d’Or at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, and awards from The Overseas Press Club of America and the NPPA.

James Hill writes: "In 2006 I decided to go to Gorky Park to photograph female veterans of World War II. The war saw the greatest mobilisation of women in military history and their role seemed to me both ignored and more fascinating than that of their male comrades. Yet as these nurses, radio operators, Ack-Ack gunners and even one sniper stood in my field studio I felt a pang of remorse, seeing the medal bedecked sailors and soldiers walking past. So I came back the next year and then for two more until I had photographed more than 500 veterans.

I had already watched these men and women for many years, fascinated by their pathos, yet when I had seen their photographs in books and magazines somehow the images seemed too melodramatic, as if they were portrayed as icons rather than people. I wished to show them as they were: ordinary men and women, united by a just cause - just as others who fought against Nazi Germany - who had ventured through the emotional and physical extremes of vicious conflict.

As these veterans posed in front of me I watched their battle with age and, like anyone who has gone to war, the fight with those memories as well. They stood proudly, sadly, joyously, their faces showing the bitter-sweet emotions of that day as they rejoiced in the memory of victory but also remembered those friends lost along the way. If 9 May marks a national celebration of the defeat of Nazi Germany, on a personal level it offers something far more complicated. Though they reunite in Gorky Park for a festive lunch with songs, dances and, naturally, a little vodka the day invariably ends with tears.

Now it is seventy years since the end of the war and only the very last of that generation remain. Many of these men and women have already passed away since I photographed but their faces remain to tell us of their sacrifices and the gratitude that we owe them. "

James Hill is a leading photographer and photojournalist and his images have won many of photography’s most important prizes including World Press Photo, the Pulitzer Prize, the Visa d’Or at Perpignan’s Visa Pour L’Image, and awards from The Overseas Press Club of America and the NPPA.

Pushkin House is very grateful for the generous private donations without which this exhibition could not take place.