Yevgeny Khaldey

Yevgeny Khaldey was born in 1917 in the eastern Ukrainian town of Yuzovka (today's Donetsk). He was the youngest son in a Jewish family. When he turns one year old, his mother is killed during a pogrom. Khaldey began taking photographs while still at school. In 1938, following his passion, he joined the TASS news agency in Moscow as a photojournalist. After the German attack on the USSR in 1941, Evgeny Khaldey went to the front as a military photojournalist for the Soviet army. In 1941 and 1942, most of his family is killed in the Holocaust. The Germans kill his father and his three sisters. After World War II, Khaldey captures post-war events in photographs. In 1948, during Stalin's persecution, he is fired from TASS. Later he takes a job at the newspaper Pravda. However, his pictures are forgotten. His photographs are rediscovered only at the end of the Cold War. Khaldey's solo exhibitions in many cities in Europe and the USA were a great success. In 1995 in Perpignan (France) at the International Festival of Photojournalism Evgeny Khaldey was awarded the title of ‘Knight of the Order of Arts and Letters’ by a special decree of the President of the French Republic.

Khaldey died in 1997 in Moscow.