140

Demina, Nina Mikhailovna

Album

1940s, Kolyma

Paper, cardboard, cloth, ink, watercolour paint, pencil, indian ink

21.5cm x 18.2cm Thickness 2cm

Self-made album for photographs and verse. The cover is covered in dark-green cloth. The side nearest the spine and the corners of the front are covered in a reddish metallic paper. On the first page is a photograph of a young girl, bordered with plants and flowers painted in watercolours. Above this is written in red ink "ЛЮБИМОЙ ДОЧЕРИ на светлую память о родимой" [To my beloved daughter..."]. On the back of the page is written in pencil: "cнимок 15/IV-44 г." ["Taken 15/IV- '44"]. The pages of the album are sheets of thick sketching paper. The album contains 56 leaves, 11 of which are blank. 4 leaves have come away from the cover. On some pages are watercolour landscapes and pictures of children. Between the pages painted with watercolours are sheets of tracing paper. On other pages are family photographs (dating apparently up to the arrest of the album's owner). The nostalgic poems are the owner's own, partly dated 1936, partly 1940. On some pages are the remains of dried flowers (petals, leaves, ears). On several pages are traces of now missing photographs. In total, the album contains 10 photographs and an ovular watercolour picture, stuck in, also several small landscapes, probably torn from a magazine.

Cover shabby, the paper inside is torn in many places. See description.

Given by N.M. Demina. According to the owner's testimony, the album was made by her father, Mikhail Ivanovich Dmitriev, at the time of his imprisonment in Kolyma (Khattynakh, Okhotsk-2 and others), 1937-48.