Wow, this is pretty awesome. 

life:

We were looking for pictures to commemorate the 70th anniversary of the start of the cataclysmic and pivotal Battle of Stalingrad (August 23, 1942); came across McAvoy’s photos from two years after the war; and as we looked through mold-pocked image after mold-pocked image, gradually hit on the notion of a gallery devoted to pictures that might otherwise never again see the light of day precisely because they’re so glaringly imperfect.

We live in a physical world. This gallery’s insubstantial, digital remnants of one photographer’s labor 65 years ago serve, in their way, as forceful reminders of that fact — no small feat for a series of incorporeal ones and zeroes.

See the photos here on LIFE.com.