The exhibition project invites visitors to reflect on memory, tragedy, and the immense heroism of our people — an example that remains especially important today. The chronicle of the Siege holds a unique meaning for the residents of Saint Petersburg — Leningrad, the city that its inhabitants and defenders managed to hold for 900 days.

Siege photography consists of canonical images familiar from newspapers: the blurred frame of a snow-covered tram, shaky 6 × 8 print, the view from the window of a destroyed apartment. And although it is impossible to fully comprehend or imagine the tragedy, each photograph conveys the undeniable value of human life, the greatness of the city’s endurance, and the pain that will never be forgotten. 

The exhibition presents more than 200 original prints from 1941–1944. At its core is the famous “Leningrad Series” by Boris Kudoyarov, which shaped the canon of official siege photography. This outstanding photojournalist worked in Leningrad throughout the entire 900 days of the blockade. Through his efforts, some of the most widely reproduced images appeared: female MPVO fighters, vegetable gardens near St. Isaac’s Cathedral, and the artillery bombardment on Nevsky Prospekt. 

The exhibition also includes documentary photographs by correspondents working for TASS and “Leningradskaya Pravda” — Vsevolod Tarasevich, Boris Utkin, and Vladimir Kapustin. Their images reveal differences in documentary approaches and editorial assignments given to the photographer. 

Amateur photography is perceived in an entirely different way: group portraits “as a token of”, passport photos. At first glance, aside from inscriptions on the back and information about provenance, they seem unrelated to the theme. Yet it is precisely through such images that the immense, distant history of the Siege, comparable in scale to an individual human life, becomes more tangible.

Another aspect highlighted in the exhibition is the work of professional institutions connected with photography during the war years. The display includes works by Sergey Gasilov, founder of the Academy of Arts’ photo laboratory, which continued to operate during wartime. He worked as a photographer for the Inspectorate for the Protection of Monuments and for the Extraordinary State Commission investigating Nazi crimes.

The exhibition also presents photographs from the wartime show “Heroic Defense of Leningrad”, which became the foundation of the first Museum of the Siege.

This exhibition project is carried out in accordance with the Decree of the Government of the Russian Federation of September 9, 2023, No. 2435-r, “On the plan of main events to prepare and celebrate the 80th anniversary of the complete liberation of Leningrad from the Nazi blockade.”

Organized in collaboration with the State Memorial Museum of the Defense and Siege of Leningrad, the Scientific Archive of the Academy of Arts, the Central Universal Scientific Library named after N. A. Nekrasov, and private collectors: Ekaterina Dmitrievna and Alexey Yuryevich Dunaev, Yuri Ivanovich Kombolin, Sergey Yaropolkovich Yushkevich, and Artem Anatolyevich Klassen.