Evgeniy Khaldei is a war photographer, a photographer of victory. Legendary photographs of war photographer Evgeniy Khaldei

The name of Evgeniy Khaldei is known to few, but his photographs are known to everyone. At least two: the photograph “Banner over the Reichstag”, taken in May 1945, which became a real symbol of Victory, and the famous photograph “First Day of War”, the only one taken in Moscow on June 22, 1941. These two frames give a vivid, but, of course, incomplete idea of ​​the work of Yevgeny Khaldei.

His footage from 1941-1946, depicting the war from the announcement of Germany’s attack on the USSR to the Nuremberg Trials, went around the whole world and is presented as illustrations in countless textbooks, documentary books, and encyclopedias. From his photographs, leaders of production and Stakhanovites, soldiers and generals, carefree children and party officials busy with state affairs, unknown miners and heads of world powers look at us. These photographs have become history - the history of a huge country and the history of one person, a great master, who subtly senses the essence and meaning of his work, who has the gift of exceptional creative expression, who respects and understands his heroes.

Evgeniy Ananyevich Khaldei was born on April 10, 1916 in Ukraine, in the mining town of Yuzovka (now Donetsk). The time and place of his birth did not at all foretell a cloudless childhood: in Ukraine there were battles of the Civil War, and the actual military actions were interspersed with the favorite entertainment in those places - Jewish pogroms. Evgeniy's parents, devout Jews, were affected in the most tragic way. In 1917, when pogromists broke into their house, his mother was killed, and the future photographer, whom she covered with her body, received his first and only bullet wound. The bullet that passed through the mother's body got stuck under the child's rib, and Evgeniy survived only thanks to the efforts of a local paramedic. The orphaned boy was taken in by his grandmother, who raised Evgeniy in strict Jewish traditions.

However, the boy’s interests from a very young age were not at all on a religious plane. The future photographer clearly preferred the local photo studio, where he worked as an apprentice, helping a neighboring photographer wash and dry prints.

In 1928, at the age of only 12, Evgeniy Khaldey made his first camera: the lens was a lens from his grandmother’s glasses, and the body was an ordinary cardboard box. Using this device, he took his first photograph, which captured the city church. The church was soon destroyed, and the boy, who became the owner of a historical photograph, began to think about the power of photography. However, the era was not conducive to such thoughts. In 1930, famine began in Ukraine.

Evgeniy Khaldei, who by 1930 had completed five years of high school, “credited” himself with another year and got a job as a cleaner in a locomotive depot. Hard work became a means of survival: a work card provided a ration of 800 grams of bread per day. In addition, the work opened up new financial and creative opportunities. Khaldei purchased a Fotokor-1 camera on a one-year installment plan and began enthusiastically photographing factory life. One of these photographs, depicting a worker at a gas tank, drew the attention of the editor of the factory newspaper. This was the beginning of the work biography of Chaldea the photographer. Soon he collaborated with the large-circulation company on an ongoing basis, participating in everything from distributing circulation to workshops to photographing production leaders. Khaldei also collaborated with the propaganda team - here he was involved in the publication of a wall newspaper.

At this time, the photographer was forced to work with the most primitive equipment, made mostly with his own hands. His main “instrument of production” was the already mentioned chamber with a cable and a stick with a nailed shoe polish lid, which contained magnesium powder on cotton wool. Khaldei learned on the go: his editor helped him with some things, the novice photographer spied some things in Kharkov and Kiev newspapers, in the magazine “Proletarskoe Photo”, and life itself suggested some things.

With some stretch, one can call his textbooks only the brochures “Photographers on construction sites of socialism”, “Photos in the work of political departments of MTS and state farms”, “20 rules of photo reporting”, etc. With a stretch - because these manuals were devoted, for the most part, to the ideological content of the photographs and the correct representation of the Soviet man, whose face should be “illuminated by the idea of ​​​​building a communist society.” Chaldean learned the technical basics in the full sense of the word “self-taught.”

The photographer’s perseverance and talent quickly began to bear fruit. The photographer began collaborating with the Ukrainian Pressphoto, and later with the Soyuzfoto agency in Moscow. Fifteen-year-old Khaldei sent his glass negatives in a cardboard box to this organization - for each photograph accepted into the agency’s photo library, the photographer was paid 5 rubles. Khaldei met 1933 in the newspaper “Stalinsky Rabochiy”. Its front page often featured editorials with photographs taken by Khaldei, mainly reportage photographs and portraits of miners with picks and jackhammers. Soon Khaldei was noticed and promoted again - the photographer’s new place of work was the newspaper “Socialist Donbass”. However, the photographer’s fame has already gone beyond the newspaper. In 1935 and 1936, for two years in a row, photographs of twenty-year-old Khaldei received second prize at the All-Donetsk photo exhibitions.

In 1936, Khaldei came to conquer Moscow. The young photographer was successful - he went to work at TASS Photo Chronicle. However, Chaldean did not stay in the capital. A traveling life began for him: business trips to Western Ukraine, Yakutia, Karelia and Belarus. Intensive work contributed to the development of creative skills; Khaldei learns a lot from the best masters of our time - from their photographs in the magazines “USSR at Construction” and “Ogonyok”.

The formula for his success is the precise direction of each photo, careful selection of future heroes, favorable angles of the best achievements of Soviet industry. These years include photographs of Alexei Stakhanov and Pasha Angelina, taken in a reportage manner, and classic portraits of the young M. Rastropovich and D. Shostakovich - some of the most famous works of Chaldea in peacetime.

But the time of peace was coming to an end.

“On June 22, I returned from Tarkhan, where they celebrated the 100th anniversary of Lermontov’s death,” Evgeniy Khaldei recalled in his notes. - I photographed the guys from the rural literary circle there. One boy read poetry: “Tell me, uncle, it’s not for nothing that Moscow was burned by fire...”, and I asked him to repeat these lines over and over again in order to make good takes. If only I knew!
And so I arrived in Moscow in the morning, I approached the house - and I lived not far from the German embassy, ​​I saw the Germans unloading bundles of things from their cars and bringing them into the embassy. I couldn't understand what was happening. And at 10 in the morning they called from the photo chronicle and ordered me to urgently report to work. At 11, Levitan began speaking on the radio: “Attention, says Moscow, all radio stations are working... At 12 o’clock an important government message will be broadcast.” He repeated this for a whole hour - everyone's nerves were on edge. At 12 Molotov's voice was heard. He stuttered slightly.
And then we heard something terrible: “... our cities of Kyiv, Minsk, Bialystok were bombed...”

Evgeniy Khaldei joined the group of war correspondents who went to the front.

He ended up in the Northern Fleet and then wore a black naval uniform throughout the war. With his Leica camera, he went through the entire war, all 1418 days and the distance from Murmansk to Berlin. Khaldei captured the Paris meeting of foreign ministers, the defeat of the Japanese in the Far East, the conference of the heads of the Allied powers in Potsdam, and the signing of the act of surrender of Germany. He participated in the liberation of Sevastopol, the storming of Novorossiysk, Kerch, the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary, and at the Nuremberg trials his photographs were presented as evidence.

An interesting story is connected with the famous photograph “The Banner over the Reichstag”.

Evgeniy Khaldei himself told how it all happened then: “I worked in the TASS photo chronicle. Suddenly the boss calls and says that we urgently need to fly to Berlin. They are storming the center, we need to film it, or even better, photograph how the soldiers are hoisting the red flag over the Reichstag .

But I won’t find a red flag in Berlin! The regimental banner, since there are still battles there, will not be given to me... I decided to go to the photo chronicle supply manager. Friend Kaplinsky worked there.

Help me out, Capa... Urgent task, I'm flying to Berlin, I need to get red material for the banner.

Where am I, Zhenya, can I get you the red material?

Do you remember, when we had a trade union meeting, you covered the table with a red cloth... Well, this is necessary for special occasions... Don’t worry, I’ll return it to you...

With this red material I went to a tailor I knew: “Moses,” I say, “there is urgent work!”

What could be more urgent than the fact that our troops are about to take Berlin and catch "dam gazlen Hitler" (Hitler's villain)?

Perhaps you're right. I’m flying to Berlin tomorrow just for this matter. And you, Moses, must help me.

All night the two of us conjured over the red banner. The tailor sewed three flags. On one I even managed to sew on a star and a hammer and sickle. As for the fact that I cut the material, Kap’s friend will forgive me...

In Berlin, I went with three soldiers to the already captured Reichstag to take a historical photograph. Somehow we made it to the roof. It was necessary to choose a point for shooting so that not only the banner and the roof were visible, but also the Berlin street. I found a surviving statue on the roof and turned to the soldiers: “Who can climb onto this figure and attach the flag?”

“I can do it,” the young machine gunner volunteered.

They found a shaft in the attic and attached a red banner to it. The machine gunner climbed onto the statue, and his friend belayed him.

That same day in the evening I flew to Moscow with a photographic document. I printed control pictures. Passed it on to the build editor. Suddenly the General Director of TASS Palgunov himself calls me:

Chaldean, what did you bring?

Like what"? Photos from the Reichstag.

Take a closer look. Do you want to show our looters to the whole world?

I began to meticulously examine the soldiers. Indeed, one of them had a watch on both hands. I had to go to the laboratory and use a needle to clean the second pair of wristwatches from the machine gunner’s hand.

Then I returned to Berlin again, continued to photograph the defeated capital of Germany, the victorious soldiers leaving their autographs on the columns of the Reichstag, the traffic police girl strictly monitoring traffic at the Brandenburg Gate."

The ability to not only use circumstances to his advantage, but also, if necessary, to make small productions, was again useful to Chaldea during filming at the Nuremberg Trials. Here the photographer was faced with the impossibility of changing the shooting point: the photographer was forbidden to move around the hall, and all participants in the process occupied strictly defined places. The problem was solved by bribing the guard - for two bottles of whiskey, he agreed to move at the right moment to allow the photographer to photograph Goering from the right angle.

And a year earlier, Khaldei took another very famous photograph, depicting Stalin in a white ceremonial uniform during the days of the Potsdam Conference.

However, after the war, difficult times came for Evgeniy Khaldei. According to the “fifth article” he is fired from TASS. The official wording was, of course, different - “staff reduction”, and according to a less streamlined expression of party officials, it was “inappropriate” to use Khaldei further as a photographer. His photographs reappeared in the central press only almost ten years later, when Khaldei went to work at the Pravda newspaper, where he worked for fifteen years. In the sixties, Khaldei completed a series of large reports, of which we can note a report on students at Moscow University and a report on the voyage of the Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker "Lenin". In 1973, Khaldei was enrolled as a photojournalist in the editorial office of the newspaper “Soviet Culture”, from where he left due to retirement. His name, which once thundered from the pages of front-line editorials, began to be forgotten. However, for professionals, Evgeniy Khaldei still remained outstanding.

Full historical justice was restored only in 1995, two years before the death of Yevgeny Khaldei. This year, at the photojournalism festival in Perpignan (France), Chaldea was honored along with another master of war photography, the American Joe Rosenthal, and by a special decree of the French president, the photographer was awarded the title of Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters. There, in Perpignan, a meeting between Evgeniy Khaldei and Mark Grosse took place. At that time, the director of the Icart-Photo photography school, who was more than once a member of the jury of the famous World Press Photo competition, Mark Grosse had already written his monograph about Evgeniy Khaldei, which was soon published under the title “Chaldean. Artist from the Soviet Union."

Also in 1995, exhibitions of Chaldea’s photographs were held in the United States with great success. Although belatedly, the works of the TASS photojournalist still took their rightful place in the golden fund of world photography. In any case, this is what French critics say, according to whom “The Banner over the Reichstag” is known to “every person in the Western world” and is “an integral part of our collective consciousness.”

Khaldei toiled in obscurity for most of his life and spent his last years, until 1997, in a small Moscow apartment on a modest pension. His small apartment became a darkroom and gathering place for colleagues. He continued to practice photography, a hobby to which he devoted 65 years of his life, even when he could not accurately focus on an enlarger without the help of students. Evgeniy Khaldei died on October 7, 1997.

Evgeny Khaldey - Soviet photographer and war correspondent. He went through all 1418 days of the Great Patriotic War, his combat path stretched from Murmansk to Berlin. In the photographer's archive, the Great Patriotic War is presented from the first to the last day. Through his eyes we see the first day of the war in 1941 and the Victory Parade on Red Square in 1945, the liberation of Sevastopol and European cities, the trial of the main Nazi criminals in Nuremberg and, of course, the Victory Banner over the Reichstag. The photographs of the Soviet photojournalist scattered throughout the planet and became part of world history.

According to Time magazine, Yevgeny Khaldei’s photograph “Victory Banner over the Reichstag” is one of the hundred most outstanding photographs that changed the world. In 1995, at the International Festival of Photojournalism in France, Eugene Khaldey was awarded the title “Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters” by a special decree of the French President.

Evgeny Khaldey

Moscow. June 22, 1941. On the streets of the city, passersby froze in front of a loudspeaker, from which an important government message was heard. On the radio, USSR Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov reports on the German attack on the Soviet Union.

This is the first photograph of the first day of the war, taken in Moscow on June 22, 1941 by photojournalist Evgeniy Khaldei.

- Moscow still lived a peaceful life, the streets were calm. At exactly 12 o'clock Foreign Minister Vyacheslav Molotov spoke on the radio: War! Literally two or three minutes after the start of the speech, I saw people gathered on the opposite side of the street in front of the loudspeaker. They listened silently, carefully, trying not to miss a single word. I jumped out of the building and took this first photo of the first day of the war... People did not leave. They stood, silent, thinking. I tried to ask: about what? No one answered. What was I thinking? That there will be a final photograph of the war, a victorious one. But will it be possible for me to do it? As far as I remember, I didn’t think about it..., recalled Evgeniy Khaldei.

Five long years of the terrible and bloody Great Patriotic War will pass before the main - victorious photograph “Victory Banner over the Reichstag”, which was taken by Evgeniy Khaldei. Then, in June 1941, he could not even imagine that his “last photograph of the war” would forever become a symbol of the Great Victory.

Evgeny Khaldey

The beginning of a creative journey

Evgeny Khaldey was born on March 23, 1917 in Yuzovka (now the capital of Donbass - Donetsk). On March 13, 1918, during a Jewish pogrom, his mother and grandfather were killed, and he, a one-year-old child, was shot in the chest. The father, who survived the pogrom, was killed by the Nazis in 1941.

As a child, Evgeniy Khaldei was raised by his grandmother. From an early age, Zhenya was interested in photography: he was an apprentice at a local photo studio, where he helped a neighboring photographer. At the age of 13 he went to work at a factory. Then he took his first photo with a homemade camera: the lens was a lens from his grandmother’s glasses, and the body was an ordinary cardboard box. Soon Zhenya bought his first real camera, “Fotokor-1,” in installments and began photographing the life of the industrial region. The editor of the factory newspaper caught the attention of one of his photographs. This was the beginning of the creative path of photographer Evgeniy Khaldei.

Worker. Donbass

For several years he worked diligently in photography and published in local newspapers. His photographs were published in the regional newspapers “Metalist”, “Stalinsky Rabochiy”, “Socialist Donbass”. In 1934, he became a photojournalist for the Soyuzfoto agency (the future of TASS) in the Donbass. In October 1936, Evgeny Khaldey was enrolled as a staff correspondent for the TASS Photo Chronicle in Moscow. Then, on the advice of one of his colleagues, instead of his real name Efim, he will take a pseudonym - Evgeniy.

In 1937-1939 he served in Karelia in the border troops of the NKVD, after demobilization he returned to work at TASS Photo Chronicle.

Evgeniy Khaldei spent most of his time on business trips. He filmed reports in Western Ukraine, Yakutia, Karelia and Belarus.

And then the war began...

Murmansk, 1941

The journey is 1418 days long

With a Leica and a notebook, Evgeniy Khaldei went through the entire war, a military journey that was 1,418 days long. As a TASS photojournalist, he visited many fronts of the Great Patriotic War with the Soviet army.

In June 1941, he was sent to Murmansk, where he was assigned to the Northern Fleet for two years.

Marine landing. Arctic, 1941

- At the end of June I left for the Northern Fleet. The first air raid alarms. The first fires at Lodeynoye station. Finally, Murmansk, Kola Bay, tugboat heading to Polyarnoye, trying on a military uniform. Here I had to film the war.

June 1942. Murmansk. Countless bombs were dropped by German aircraft on the city. Consisting mainly of wooden houses, the settlement turned into ashes, only brick chimneys remained.

From the memoirs of Evgeniy Khaldei:

- In June 1942, the Nazis decided to burn Murmansk to the ground. More than half of the wooden city, on which thousands of incendiary and high-explosive bombs were dropped, was burning. People and houses died in the fire. Then in June 1942, I met an old woman there. She was carrying a wooden suitcase - all that was left of the hearth. I took a photo of her. The woman lowered her suitcase, sat down on it and said reproachfully: “Why are you, son, photographing my grief, our misfortune? If only you could take a picture of how our people are bombing Germany!” I felt embarrassed. “Yes, mother,” I said, “you are right, of course. But I’ll probably have a chance to take a photo like this.”

Murmansk, June 1942

Three years later, a photograph of a woman with a suitcase from Murmansk with several other photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei was used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials.

After a German air raid. Murmansk

In 1943, Evgeniy Khaldei was transferred to the Black Sea. The photojournalist photographed military everyday life in Novorossiysk, Kerch, Feodosia, Bakhchisarai, Simferopol and Sevastopol.

Battles for Novorossiysk

From the memoirs of Evgeniy Khaldei:

- I had the opportunity to participate in the very first battles for Novorossiysk. I photographed those who fought for the city, liberating block after block, who hoisted the flag at the Lenin monument in front of the port administration building. Then - the Kerch bridgehead. Kerch (and again - the naval flag, now on Mount Mithridates), Feodosia, Simferopol, Bakhchisarai, battles on Sapun Mountain and - Sevastopol. This was a year before the Victory...

Liberation of Europe

March 26, 1944 is a significant date in the history of the Great Patriotic War. On this day, Soviet troops reached the state border of the USSR on the Prut River.

Soviet soldiers crossed the Prut River and transferred the fighting to Romanian territory. From that moment on, a new stage of the war began: the liberation of the peoples of Europe from the Nazi invaders.

In liberated Bulgaria, 1944

From the memoirs of Evgeniy Khaldei:

- It sounded a little strange - “the liberation of Europe.” In the reports of the Information Bureau, we are accustomed to hearing about the liberation of our settlements and cities in Ukraine, Belarus, and the Black Sea. And now we stood at the border with Romania. There was no military map, somewhere I found an old geographical atlas, tore out the corresponding page from it - and using this map I found my way around Europe. In August 1944, Soviet troops entered the territory of Romania... Then there was Bulgaria: Ruse, Lovech (here our Studebaker was lifted and carried by a thousand-strong crowd of residents in their arms, here I managed to take a picture of “Rejoicing Bulgaria”), Staro Tarnovo and, finally, Sofia, welcoming the Red Army with all her heart, with great joy... Then - Bucharest again, a jump on a special U-2 communications plane through the Transylvanian Alps, battles on the outskirts of Belgrade. Here we felt the warmth and friendship of the residents and soldiers of the People's Liberation Army of Yugoslavia, among whom Soviet soldiers fought. After heavy fighting, we entered liberated Belgrade. In December 1944, I was already in Hungary and took part in the liberation of Budapest. Then the battles for Vienna began.

The story of one photograph

The legendary photograph “Victory Banner over the Reichstag” was taken by Evgeniy Khaldei on May 2, 1945 in Berlin. The picture captured soldiers of the 8th Guards Army: Alexey Kovalev, Abdulkhakim Ismailov and Leonid Gorichev. This photo is not reportage, but staged. The photographer asked the soldiers to help take a historical photograph. After which I filmed two tapes with them. The banner held by Alexey Kovalev in the photo was brought with him by Evgeniy Khaldei.

From the memoirs of Evgeniy Khaldei:

- I’ve been thinking for a long time about how to put my “full stop” in a protracted war: what could be more significant - the banner of victory over a defeated enemy!.. By the end of the war, I no longer returned from business trips without taking pictures with banners over liberated or captured cities. The flags over Novorossiysk, over Kerch, over Sevastopol, which were liberated exactly a year before the Victory, are perhaps more dear to me than others. And such an opportunity presented itself,” says Khaldei. - I had barely returned to Moscow from Vienna when the editors of TASS Photo Chronicle ordered me to fly to Berlin the next morning.

An order is an order, and I quickly began to get ready: I ​​understood that Berlin was the end of the war. My distant relative, tailor Israel Kishitser, with whom I lived on Leontyevsky Lane, helped me sew three flags by cutting out the red mestkom tablecloths that TASS supply manager Grisha Lyubinsky “gifted” to me. I personally cut out the star, hammer and sickle from white material... By morning all three flags were ready. I rushed to the airfield and flew to Berlin...

The first banner was installed on the roof of the Tempelhof airfield, the second near the chariot at the Brandenburg Gate. The third banner was installed on the roof of the Reichstag.

Officially, the main banner over the Reichstag (over forty of them were installed by different units) was hoisted the day before by Soviet soldiers Mikhail Egorov, Meliton Kantaria and Alexey Berest.

From the memoirs of Evgeniy Khaldei:

- But I didn’t set such a goal (to be the first to climb): I had to climb onto the roof of the Reichstag with my “tablecloth” at all costs... And with a flag in my bosom, I sneakily walked around the Reichstag and made my way into it from the side main entrance. The battle was still going on in the surrounding area. I came across several soldiers and officers. Without saying a word, instead of saying “hello”, I took out my last flag... I don’t remember how we ended up on the roof... I immediately started looking for a convenient place to shoot. The dome was burning. Smoke billowed from below, there was blazing fire, sparks were falling - it was almost impossible to get close. And then I began to look for another place - so that the prospect would be visible. I saw the Brandenburg Gate below - somewhere there was my flag... When I found a good point, I immediately, barely holding on to the small parapet, began filming. I shot two tapes. I took both horizontal and vertical photographs. While filming, I stood on the very edge of the roof... Of course, it was a little scary. But when I already went down and looked again at the roof of the building, where I was a few minutes ago and saw my flag above the Reichstag, I realized that my risk was not in vain.

That same evening, Evgeniy Khaldei went to Moscow with the footage. Then he returned to Berlin again, where he continued to photograph the defeated capital of Germany, the victorious soldiers leaving their autographs on the columns of the Reichstag, the traffic police girl strictly monitoring traffic at the Brandenburg Gate.

Then there was the Victory Parade in Moscow and the Nuremberg Trials.

Awards

two Orders of the Patriotic War, 2nd degree, Order of the Red Star, medals.

Ranks

lieutenant

senior lieutenant

Positions

war photojournalist

Biography

Evgeniy Ananyevich Khaldey - Soviet photographer, military photojournalist.

Evgeny Khaldey was born in Yuzovka (now Donetsk).

During the Jewish pogrom on March 13, 1918, his mother and grandfather were killed, and the one-year-old child himself received a bullet wound in the chest.

He studied at a cheder (Jewish primary school) and began working at a factory at the age of 13.

I took my first photo at the age of 13 with a homemade camera. At the age of 16 he began working as a photojournalist.

Since 1939 he has been a correspondent for TASS Photo Chronicle.

Filmed Dneprostroy, reports about Alexei Stakhanov.

Represented the editorial office of TASS (Telegraph Agency of the Soviet Union) on the naval front during the Great Patriotic War.

He spent all 1418 days of the war with a Leica camera from Murmansk to Berlin.

He filmed the Paris meeting of foreign ministers, the defeat of the Japanese in the Far East, the conference of the heads of the Allied powers in Potsdam, the hoisting of the flag over the Reichstag, the signing of the act of surrender of Germany, the Nuremberg trials.

At the Nuremberg trials, one of the physical evidence were photographs of Evgeniy Ananyevich.

Participated in the liberation of Sevastopol, the assault on Novorossiysk, Kerch, the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Hungary.

The photograph “Victory Banner over the Reichstag” was taken on the instructions of TASS Photo Chronicle by photographer Evgeniy Khaldei on May 2, 1945, when the fighting had already subsided and the Reichstag had already been taken.

In 1948 he was fired from TASS on charges of insufficient educational level and insufficient political literacy (reason: Jewish origin).

After the death of I. Stalin, he again gained access to newspaper pages.

After the war, he created a gallery of images of front-line soldiers in peaceful labor.

Since 1957 he worked for the newspaper Pravda, and since 1973 for Soviet Culture.

Chaldea's military photographs became world famous and were included in many books and encyclopedias about the war.

Evgeniy's photo albums were published in Russia, Germany, the USA, Austria, exhibitions of his works were held in Italy, Belgium, France, Austria, and Israel.

In 1995 in Perpignan (France) at the International Festival of Photojournalism, Evgeniy Khaldey was awarded the most honorable award in the art world - the title “Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.”

In 1997, the American publishing house Aperture published the book “Witness to History. Photos by Evgeniy Khaldei.”

In 2004, the publishing house “Editions Du Chene - Hachette Livre” (France) published the book “Chaldeans” by Mark Grosse. Photojournalist of the Soviet Union."

He was buried at the Kuntsevo cemetery in Moscow.

From the memoirs of Lev Borodulin
- In the summer of 1992, having arrived in Berlin, I immediately went to the Reichstag, where I ended the war and have not been since then. I was almost there, when suddenly... I saw Chaldea. He stood against the background of the Brandenburg Gate with the very photograph that he took at this place in May 1945. It hung on his chest. Zhenya also immediately recognized me and rushed towards me with the words: “Where two Jews meet!” We hugged and kissed, and only after that I noticed that cameramen were filming us. It turns out that the Germans were making a film about Zhenya called “The Big Photographer with a Small Watering Can,” and then I unexpectedly “climbed” into the frame, which, however, they were very happy about: the scene was as if ordered, even though it was not in the script.

Later we met in Israel, where Khaldei came at the invitation of the local Union of Veterans. He was settled in Tel Aviv, and we saw each other almost every day. Zhenya dreamed of visiting the Western Wall, I took him there and was by his side the whole time. Putting on a kippah and approaching the Wall, he took a small album out of his bag and began to whisper something, turning over its pages. I walked away and decided to take a photo for him at the Western Wall as a souvenir. I pointed the lens and felt something was wrong. I thought that my hands were shaking, clutching the camera, and then I realized that it was Zhenya’s shoulders that were shaking. He cried, holding in his hands a portrait of his mother, killed during the pogrom. The pogromist's bullet pierced through her and got stuck in the body of her one-year-old son, Zhenya, who was pulled out from the dead by a local paramedic. In this album with which Chaldean came to the Western Wall.

The Second World War had its own, bright symbol in photography - these are the photographs of Evgeniy Ananyevich Khaldei, who went through the entire war with his camera from Moscow to Berlin. He managed to capture in his photographs this terrible era from the announcement of Germany's attack on the Soviet Union to the Nuremberg trials.

Photographs of Evgeniy Khaldei were published in the central media of various countries, and many of them took pride of place as illustrations in documentary books, history textbooks and encyclopedias. His photographs have always had a special expressiveness thanks to the talent of a great master, a subtle sense of the meaning of his work and understanding of his heroes.

Evgeniy Ananyevich Khaldei was born in Ukraine in Donetsk at the height of the Civil War.

In 1917, during the Jewish pogroms that invariably accompanied military operations, pogromists broke into the house of his parents. A mother shielding her baby was killed. At the same time, the bullet, which passed through the mother’s body, seriously hit the child. The future photographer managed to survive only thanks to the efforts of a local paramedic.

Evgeniy Khaldei was raised by his grandmother. Already at an early age his interest in photography manifested itself. At the age of 12, he managed to make his first camera using a lens from his grandmother's glasses and an ordinary cardboard box. Using this simple device, he took his first photograph - a photograph of the city church, which was subsequently destroyed.

1943 (Please note, the captain was awarded the rare and therefore prestigious at that time Order of the Patriotic War, which was originally worn on a pendant)

Murmansk, 1941

Plant named after Voikov. Kerch, 1944.

With the beginning of the Great Patriotic War, Evgeniy Khaldei went straight to the front in a group of war correspondents. At first he ended up in the Northern Fleet, but later participated in the assault on Novorossiysk, Kerch and the liberation of Sevastopol.

Battle for Vienna. April 1945.

Together with Soviet troops, he entered Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, Hungary and Germany, constantly updating war photographs with his Leica camera. Throughout the 1418 days of the war, from Murmansk to Berlin, Evgeniy Khaldei continued to film.

His photographs depict the defeat of the Japanese in the Far East,

Photographer Evgeny Khaldey near Hermann Goering at the Nuremberg trials, 1946

Paris meeting of foreign ministers and signing of the act of surrender of Germany.

It was he who took down the Victory Banner at the defeated Reichstag in Berlin, which became a symbol of the victory of the Soviet people in the Great Patriotic War.

Evgeny Khaldey in Berlin at the Brandenburg Gate

One of the most famous photographs of Yevgeny Khaldei is the photograph “The First Day of the War,” taken in Moscow on June 22, 1941.

Having arrived in Moscow just the day before to film Lermontov’s anniversary in Tarkhany, he noticed that people on the street began to gather at the loudspeaker. Immediately jumping out into the street with a camera, Khaldei managed to capture a unique picture in the picture: people gathered at the loudspeaker with tense faces listening to Molotov’s address that the war had begun.

Subsequently, it turned out that this photograph of Evgeniy Khaldei became the only photograph taken precisely on June 22, 1941, that is, on the day the Great Patriotic War began.

Another famous photograph of him was published in many newspapers around the world - this is a photograph of the corporal of the 87th separate road maintenance battalion, Maria Shalneva, who regulated the movement of military equipment near the Reichstag in Berlin.

But the most famous photograph of Yevgeny Khaldei is, of course, “The Banner over the Reichstag.” It was here that his talent as a photographer manifested itself with amazingly precise direction, selection of future heroes and search for an advantageous angle for greater expressiveness of the photo. He received an urgent task to fly to Berlin, where the city center was already being stormed, and Chaldea had to film how the soldiers of the Soviet army would hoist the red flag over the Reichstag.

Preparations for this legendary photograph began in Moscow, where Evgeniy Khaldei arrived shortly before the shooting in order to prepare the same flag with a star, hammer and sickle that would soon be hoisted on the Reichstag by soldiers of the Soviet army.

He arrived in Berlin on May 2, 1945, when general rejoicing was already felt there. Every soldier wanted to sign on the wall of the Reichstag or tie his rag to it. On the way to the Reichstag, Yevgeny Khaldei came across several soldiers and asked them to help climb onto the roof in order to hoist the flag. Climbing the twisted stairs, they found a pole for the banner in the attic of the already captured building. Everything was ready to start photographing.

The flag was tied by Kiev resident Alexey Kovalev, who was assisted by reconnaissance company foreman Abdulkhakim Ismailov and Minsk resident Leonid Gorychev. While the fighters were adjusting the victory banner, Evgeniy Khaldey managed to find the most favorable angle and, as a result, filmed two tapes. Soon the legendary photograph “The Banner over the Reichstag” was published in all the country’s central newspapers and in foreign print media, becoming a real symbol of Victory.

Three times Hero of the Soviet Union, fighter pilot Ivan Kozhedub at the Dynamo stadium. Moscow, 1946.

Unfortunately, after the end of the war, by decision of party officials, Yevgeny Khaldei was fired from TASS, and only fifteen years later he managed to get a job at the Pravda newspaper.

In the 60s, his photo reports about students at Moscow University and the voyage of the Soviet nuclear-powered icebreaker "Lenin" were published. Subsequently, he worked in the “Soviet Culture”, creating a unique gallery of images of front-line soldiers engaged in peaceful labor.

But gradually his name began to be forgotten, and only in 1995, two years before the death of Yevgeny Khaldei, he was honored along with another master of war photography, the American Joe Rosenthal, at the International Festival of Photojournalism in Perpignan, France. He was also awarded the honorary title "Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters".

World famous photo - Queen of the Brandenburg Gate

In 1997, the publishing house Aperture published the book Witness to History. Photographs by Evgeniy Khaldei,” and the premiere of the 60-minute film “Evgeniy Khaldei - Photographer of the Stalin Era” took place in Paris and Brussels.

At the end of his life, Evgeniy Khaldey was still engaged in photography, turning his small apartment into a real darkroom and a meeting place with his colleagues in the craft. He died on October 7, 1997.

War photographers... they have a special place among their colleagues. And the point is not only that they, unlike others, really risk their lives. It’s just that a war photographer sees the wrong side of life and death, sees genuine people. And he may also be a witness to History. Especially if we are talking about the most difficult war that the photographer went through from the first to the last day.

Evgeny Ananyevich Khaldei was born in the village of Yuzovka, now the city of Donetsk.

Evgeniy Ananyevich Khaldey - legendary Soviet photographer

From the age of 13 he worked at a factory and at the same age he took his first photograph with a homemade camera.

By the way, he rented a local church, which was soon destroyed. Perhaps it was then that young Eugene realized the full significance of photography for history.

Soon he bought his first real camera, “Fotokor-1”, in installments, and soon he was already collaborating with the factory’s large-scale circulation. He also took photographs for wall newspapers.

For several years, Evgeniy simultaneously gained experience and achieved fame by publishing in various publications and participating in creative competitions.

As a result, in 1936 the young photographer moved to Moscow. He traveled a lot around the country on business trips, photographing leaders in production, as well as the construction of the Five-Year Plan. But then the war began...

Evgeny Khaldey turned out to be a front-line photojournalist already on June 22 and spent all 1418 days of the war on different fronts, without parting with his faithful Leika. It was not least from his photographs that the country judged the war, and some of them were presented as evidence at the Nuremberg Tribunal.

And it was he who took one of the most symbolic photographs of that war - the hoisting of the banner over the defeated Reichstag. The photograph was replicated in millions of copies, but only relatively recently Evgeniy Khaldey told the true story of this photograph.

"Banner of victory over the Reichstag." Legendary photo of Evgeniy Khaldei

As it turned out, the photo was completely staged after all. Moreover, although the main banner over the Reichstag (in total there were over forty of them installed by different units) was indeed hoisted on May 1 by Egorov, Kantaria and Berest, they are not in the picture at all! And the banner in the hands of the soldiers has nothing to do with the 150th Infantry Division - it was made from a tablecloth and brought by Yevgeny Khaldei himself.

On May 2, Yevgeny Khaldei arrived at the Reichstag with his banner and stopped several soldiers, asking them to help. Three of them helped him raise the banner as high as possible given that the building was on fire. It was these soldiers who were in the picture - Alexey Kovalev (Ukraine), Abdulkhakim Ismailov (Dagestan) and Leonid Gorichev (Belarus). The photograph itself took on a life of its own - in the press it appeared as reportage, not staged, and its heroes were given different names.

Three times Hero of the Soviet Union fighter pilot Ivan Kozhedub at the Dynamo stadium. Moscow, 1946. Photo by Evgeniy Khaldey

After the war, Evgeniy Khaldey continued to work as a photographer and participate in exhibitions. He was an excellent photo reporter, although the country and the world knew him primarily as the author of “that very photograph of the banner over the Reichstag.”

In 1995, at the International Festival of Photojournalism, Evgeniy Khaldey was awarded perhaps the most honorable award in the world of art - the title “Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters.” Two years later, Evgeniy Ananyevich passed away.

Finally: several works by Evgeniy Ananyevich. Without words.

The Nazi shot his family and committed suicide. Vein. April 1945. Photo by Evgeniy Khaldey

“We are from Berlin!”, May 1945. Photo by Evgeniy Khaldey