Galina Sanko

• Name — Galina Sanko • Native Name — Галина Захаровна Санько • Born — 1904 • Birthplace — Sudzha, Kursk Gubernaia, Russian Empire • Died — 1981 • Place of death — Moscow, Russia • Occupation — photojournalist • Years Active — 1938–1981 • Known for — World War II photography

Galina Zakharovna Sanko was born in 1904 and as a child had been impressed with photographs of women reporters in magazines like Ogoniok and Spotlight. She took photography courses to gain a basic understanding of techniques and then worked as a laboratory assistant in the editorial department of the newspaper Water Transport. By the early 1930s, she had become a professional photographer and asked to participate in an Arctic expedition. She went with the icebreaker Krassin to the Kamchatka Peninsula and Commander Islands and wintered on Wrangell Island taking photographs of the area and visiting the memorial to Vitus Bering on Bering Island. Sanko also photographed a journey to the Far East, but found her true calling in photojournalism during World War II. After the persecution of her husband in 1938, Sanko dedicated her life to photography. When the war broke out, she asked to go to the front as a war correspondent. Initially, Sanko trained as a nurse and then studied driving and auto mechanics. She bandaged the wounded and once she had proved her fitness for battle was allowed as one of only five women who served as war photographers. She worked for the magazine Frontline Illustration and took photographs of battles in Kursk, Moscow and Stalingrad, taking pictures at Bryansk and the Don Campaign near Stallingrad. In 1944 during the northern offensive, she took photographs of the siege of Leningrad. Near the end of the war, she took photographs of the fighting against Japan. She was seriously injured twice during the war. In the movie Wild Honey (1967) based on the novel by Leonid Pervomaisky, there is a scene based upon a real-life event in which Sanko escaped in the nick of time from being fired upon by a German tank. • Illustration — Photograph of Russian children at a formerly Finnish-run transfer camp in Petrozavodsk on 29 June 1944, one day after the Finns left the area. The sign reads, in Finnish and Russian: "Transfer camp. Entry to the camp and socializing through the fence are forbidden, violators will be shot." At the end of the war, Sanko worked for the magazine Ogoniok but until the 1960s, her work was banned and hidden in an archive. Accused of distorting the truth, with her photographs of the liberation of the Petrozavodsk camp, Sanko was exonerated when 20 years after the war, she returned to the Republic of Karelia and found one of the children she had photographed in the camp. After publishing "Claudia 20 years later", her archive was opened in 1966 and Sanko participated in many photographic exhibitions at home and abroad. She was awarded the Order of the Red Star. Sanko died in Moscow in 1981.

Galina Sanko is recorded as photographer, documentarian and photojournalist.