«Yasha the Deer at War»

1941

During the defence of Murmansk, a wild deer came out of the nearby forests and headed straight to the soldiers lying in the trenches. He was slightly concussed by an explosion, and he did not understand where he was. The soldiers tried to chase the deer away to prevent him from dying in the bombing, but he wouldn’t leave.

The soldiers named him Yasha, fed him, built him a shelter, and even used him to deliver ammunition to their positions. Every time an alarm sounded, the deer ran to the soldiers; nothing scared him except for one thing — Yasha did not want to be alone.

Few people know, but in the original negative, there was only the deer — no explosions or rushing fighter jets in the sky. Yevgeny Khaldei created the photograph from several shots; it is, in fact, a collage of three images (so called multi exposition): the deer, the explosion, and the aeroplanes. Through this newly created photograph, we can appreciate the artistic vision of the master, how he thought and how he composed the frame.

The deer, according to the golden ratio approach, is balanced by the clumps of earth from the explosion, which the animal’s gaze is directed towards. Between the two main subjects of the photograph, in the middle of the frame, is a broken tree, symbolising a life cut short. The viewer’s gaze always moves from left to right, whereupon it encounters the opposing dynamic of the flying aeroplanes – British Hawker Hurricane fighter jets. As a result, a very dramatic and vivid image is achieved depicting a life destroyed by war, started by humans.

In 1944, when the Murmansk battles were over and the troops were being redeployed to another area, the soldiers did not know what to do with the deer. In the end, they loaded Yasha into a truck and took him far into the tundra to meet his kind. But Yasha could not understand what was happening or why they had left him alone; he ran after the truck for as long as he could.