Soviet Caviar Harvest by Carl Mydans, Astrakhan 1960

“The cream and hot butter mingled and overflowed separating each glucose bead of caviar from its fellows, capping it in white and gold.”

— Evelyn Waugh, Brideshead Revisited

 

 

In 1960, American photographer Carl Mydans (May 20, 1907 – August 16, 2004) journeyed behind the Iron Curtain to show the West how the Soviets harvested caviar. We see Kazakh fisherwoman sweep net fishing for Osetra sturgeon at Tanya Molodeznaya in the Volga River Delta near Astrakhan, Russia.

 

 

Carl Mydans worked for the Farm Security Administration in the 1930s and Life magazine, joining a week before its first issue was published in 1936 and staying until the magazine folded in 1972. During World War Two, he photographed many of the battlefronts and was held prisoner by the Japanese for two years in Manila On his release, Mydans volunteered to cover the liberation of Italy and then France. He also covered hydrogen bomb tests in Bikini, the war in Korea and earthquakes in Japan.

 

 

Astrakhan lies downstream on the Volga River, on the edge of a delta reaching into the Caspian Sea. This is the spawning ground for beluga and Caspian sturgeon, which together produce four-fifths of the world’s black caviar. When overfishing led the fish to near-extinction in the 1990s, Russia banned all commercial sturgeon fishing in the Caspian basin and the export of all black caviar. The industy is now a global farming business.