Yevgeny Khaldei, Red Army photographer 1941-1946

18 March - 5 June 2005

The first day of the war in the USSR. Molotov's announcement of the German invasion of the Soviet Union was broadcast by Radio Moscow on loudspeakers, June 22nd 1941 Photograph: Yevgeny Khaldei Khaldei/Voller Ernst, Berlin

From 18 March until 5 June 2005 the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam is hosting an exhibition of photographs by Yevgeny Khaldei (1917-1997), one of the most important Soviet war photographers of the Second World War. The photograph he took on 2 May 1945 of a Russian soldier placing the Red flag atop the Reichstag building in Berlin is world famous. This monumental, albeit staged, photograph has become a symbol of the end of the war and the defeat of the Nazis.

As a photographer, Yevgeny Khaldei bore witness to some of the most important events of the twentieth century. Upon the Soviet Union's entry into the war, he departed with the Red Army to take photographs at the front. He travelled to Romania, Yugoslavia, Hungary, Austria and Germany, where he documented the liberation of Berlin. He took his final war photographs during the Potsdam Conference, at which the 'Big Three' (Stalin, Churchill and Truman) drew up Germany's post-war boundaries. In 1945 and 1946 he photographed the War Crimes Trials at Nuremberg: "I photographed the atrocities wrought by the Fascists in the Soviet Union. Now I am photographing the vengeance."

Khaldei's work is remarkable for its combination of documentary and artistic photography and for his commentary accompanying many of the images. His words testify to his involvement with his subject matter and demonstrate his sense of humor. He occasionally staged or manipulated his photographs in order to add strength to a particular event. His work emphasizes the tragic and absurd aspects of the Second World War.

Khaldei (left) and Göring.
Photograph: An American colleague of Khaldei.
Khaldei/Voller Ernst, Berlin
Khaldei said about this picture:
'When we received orders to leave Nuremberg, I asked an American colleague to photograph me with Göring. Göring remembered that, because of me, he had been hit with a club, and hence he always turned his head aside when I came into the courtroom. When he noticed I wanted to get into the picture with him, he put down his hand in front of his face'

Khaldei, born in 1917 to a Jewish family in the Ukraine, made his first childhood camera from the lenses of his grandmother's spectacles. At the age of nineteen he became a press photographer for the official Soviet press agency TASS. His work was greatly admired by the Soviet elite, resulting in portrait commissions from Stalin to Gorbachev and Yeltsin. He worked at TASS until 1972 when, under pressure from State anti-Semitism, he was forced to retire. Khaldei also lost his job for six years during Stalin's regime because of his Jewish background. His international renown dates only from the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991.

The Jewish Historical Museum has made a representative selection of Yevgeny Khaldei's work from the collection of the Voller Ernst Photo Agency in Berlin. Khaldei's own texts provide the captions for the photographs. They may also be found in the publication that accompanies the exhibition.

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