Tuesday, August 31, 2021

Natalia Fedorovna Bode: Haunted by the War


     Soviet photojournalist Natalia Fedorovna Bode poses beside a T-28 medium tank. Born December 30, 1914 in Kiev, Bode began her journalistic career in 1934 with the коммунист (Communist) and by 1938, she was working as a columnist for the Ukrainian bureau of the Russian News Agency TASS. 

     When war broke out, Bode would lose her husband Boris Kozyuk (also a photographer) and so she volunteered to cover the combat with the newspaper Krasnaya Armia (Red Army) and she would spend the remainder of the war covering actions on the Central and Southwest Front as well as the First Belarussian Front. A skilled photographer, Bode was not above taking risks to obtain compelling imagery. Her photographs were published in numerous other Russian newspapers and press outlets and they would also see worldwide publication as well. For her dedication, acclaimed work, and service, Bode was given the rank of First Lieutenant and she earned the Order of the Red Star, Order of the Patriotic War, Medal of Courage, and the Medal for the Defense of Stalingrad. 

     Bode would remarry to Yevgeny Dolmatovsky, a poet who worked for Pravda to whom she’d met during the war. Bode would continue her photojournalistic career with the Ukrainian newspaper Radyansʹka Kulʹtura (Soviet Culture). She died on July 2, 1996 and upon her death, it was discovered she’d hidden away much of her wartime photographs, most unpublished, as Bode wished not to remind herself of the war and all that came with it.

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