Jewgeni Chaldej

Yevgeny Khaldei (23 March 1917 - 6 October 1997)

Born in Donetsk, Ukraine, Yevgeny Khaldei is undisputedly one of the most important photographers of the Second World War alongside Robert Capa, Lee Miller and Dimitri Baltermanz. His picture of the flag-raising ceremony at the Reichstag in Berlin is now one of the iconic images of the 20th century. The same goes for his pictures of the Potsdam Agreement and the Nuremberg Trials. He had a special ability to capture the right moments with great symbolic expression.

His lesser-known but significant work covering the entire period of the invasion of the Soviet Union and the battles up to the capitulation is also unique. Yevgeny Khaldei accompanied the attack by the German Wehrmacht with his camera from the very first day of the war. At the end of the war, he also met Robert Capa at the Nuremberg trials. They became friends and Robert Capa gave Yevgeny Chaldei his Speed Grafic. A standard medium format camera at the time.

But while Robert Capa soon achieved great fame, a very difficult time began for Yevgeny Khaldei. After the war, he quickly fell out of favour with Stalin due to his Jewish origins. He only narrowly escaped the gulag thanks to Stalin's death. Despite the improved conditions after the Stalin era, he was never able to regain his former importance in the Soviet Union.

This situation only changed after the collapse of the Soviet Union at the end of the 1980s. His work was analysed by Ernst Volland and Heinz Krimmer in Berlin. Together with J. Chaldej, they examined his archive, documented the captions and compiled the only collection of his most important works that still exists today. All of these works were printed by Yevgeny Khaldei himself and defined as important.

Thanks to the co-operation between bildschatz.org and Ernst Volland and Heinz Krimmer, Bildschatz.org is able to make this important collection accessible to the public.

Further information about J. Chaldej:

https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jewgeni_Ananjewitsch_Chaldei

Exhibitions (selection)

- Kunstamt Neuköln 1990

- Gruner & Jahr Gallery Hamburg 1993

- Beth Hatefutsoth, The Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora, Israel, 1999

- Martin Gropius Bau Berlin 2008 (cooperation with the German Federal Cultural Foundation)

- Jewish Museum Vienna, 2021