12 x 16 inches
Khaldei, Yevgeny Ananievich (March 23, 1917, Yuzovka, now Donetsk — October 6, 1997, Moscow), a well-known Soviet photographer, war photo correspondent.
Khaldei took his first photograph at 13 using a camera he made himself and by 16 he already worked as a photo correspondent. From 1939 on he served as a Fotokhroniki TASS (TASS Photo Documents) correspondent, documenting the Dneprostroi construction project and reporting about the “shock worker” Alexei Stakhanov. During the Great Patriotic War (1941-1945) he was the TASS correspondent in the Navy, taking part in the liberation of Sevastopol, the storming of Novorossiisk and Kerch, and the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria and Hungary. He documented the defeat of the Japanese in the Far East, the Potsdam conference, the Paris conference of foreign ministers and the Nuremberg Trial, at which his photographs were presented as evidence. He made his most famous photograph, Victory Banner over the Reichstag, on May 2, 1945.
After the war he was dismissed from Fotokhroniki TASS and did not see his photographs published by newspapers until Stalin died. In the postwar period he photographed former frontline soldiers engaged in peaceful occupations.
During the anti-cosmopolitanism campaign he was dismissed from TASS on charges of inadequate education and political awareness.
In 1995 the International Photojournalism Festival of Perpignan (France) bestowed upon Yevgeny Khaldei the Order of the Knight of Arts and Letters, the most honorary award in arts.