Product Code Database
Yevgeny Ananyevich Khaldei (; ; – 6 October 1997) was a Soviet Red Army naval officer and photographer. He is best known for his World War II photograph of a Soviet soldier raising a flag over the Reichstag in Berlin, the capital of the vanquished Nazi Germany, at the end of the war.
He started working with the Soviet press agency TASS since 25 October 1936 (at the age of 19) as a photographer. His father and three of his four sisters were murdered by the Nazis during the war. He also witnessed the aftermath of the massacre of 7,000 civilians in Kerch in 1942. During the march to Berlin with the advancing Red Army, Khaldei experienced the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, and Hungary, and the Vienna offensive.
Khaldei may have joined the Navy as Technician-Intendant 1st class, though the TASS news agency obtained for him an honorary rank of navy lieutenant which allowed him freedom of movement to record military personnel and battles. (2025). 9781848542297, Murray. ISBN 9781848542297 In 1945, Khaldei persuaded his uncle to create a large Soviet flag after seeing Joe Rosenthal's photo of the flag raising at Iwo Jima while the Soviet army closed in on Berlin and took it with him to Berlin for the Reichstag shot.Griffin, Michael (199). "The Great War Photographs: Constructing Myths of History and Photojournalism". In Bonnie Brennen & Hanno Hardt eds., Picturing the Past: Media, History & Photography. (pp. 122–157). Urbana: University of Illinois Press. p. 144. . He later took photographs of the Nazis at the Nuremberg trials and of the Red Army during its offensive in Japanese Manchuria.
Khaldei continued to work in photojournalism after the war as a TASS staff photographer, but was reprimanded in a 1947 evaluation: "After returning to peacetime conditions, he failed to develop himself at all, and at the present moment he is considered a passable photojournalist ... The reasons for this are several. First, all the praise that was heaped upon him as a military photojournalist finally went to his head, and he rested on his laurels. His growth as a photojournalist stopped. The other reason has to do with Khaldei's cultural level, which is exceptionally low." In October 1948, Khaldei received notice that he was being let go because of the agency's "staff downsizing".
Khaldei continued to photograph, now working as a freelance photographer for Soviet newspapers, and focused on capturing the scenes of everyday life. In 1959, he got a job again at the newspaper Pravda, where he worked until he was forced to retire in 1970. Khaldei's wartime photographs were collected in a 93-page book, Ot Murmanska do Berlina ( From Murmansk to Berlin), published in 1984. His work continues to be distributed through the Sovfoto agency which has operated in the West since 1932. Khaldei's international fame dates from the 1990s, when exhibitions of his photographs began to be held in the West.
While Khaldei frequently staged or manipulated his photographs, he insisted that this was to signify the importance and add strength to a particular event. His work was also admired by the elites of the Soviet Union and he is renowned for creating commissioned portraits for State leaders such as Joseph Stalin, Mikhail Gorbachev and Boris Yeltsin.
The celebrated image is a re-enactment of an earlier flag-raising of which no photograph was taken, as it happened at 10:40 p.m. on 30 April 1945 while the building was actually still held by German troops. A group of four Soviet soldiers fought their way to the roof, where 23-year-old private Mikhail Minin climbed up on an equestrian statue representing Germany, to fasten an improvised flagpole to its crown. As that occurred at night and under fire, no photo could be taken. The next day German snipers shot down the flag. The surrender of the Reichstag came on 2 May 1945, and only after that did Khaldei scale the building along with the three soldiers which he had picked up randomly on his way. He was carrying with him a large flag sewn from a red tablecloth by his Jewish friend in Moscow for this very purpose. (1997). 9780893817381, Aperture. ISBN 9780893817381 The seams are indeed visible on the picture.
|
|
