May 12
The Index
1 result(s)
- Jewgeni Chaldej - The Important Moment
1- Budapest, Januar 1945, jüdisches Paar
2- 1941, Rußwolke, verbrannte Gebäude / black clouds, burnt buildings
Jewgeni Chaldej (1917-1997) is sometimes nicknamed the Soviet Robert Capa. Just like his American counterpart, he didn't photograph the war as a reporter, but rather as a soldier among soldiers, who shot with his camera instead of a rifle. His pictures do not document the Allied landing or the combat on the Atlantic front, but rather the awful conflict between Germany and the U.S.S.R.
Thus on display is the disaster at Murmansk, a town made of wood, burnt to ashes within 24 hours by 350 incendiary bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe.
In Budapest, after the city was liberated, a Jewish couple still wears the yellow star sewn into their clothes.
Elsewhere, German civilians committed suicide before the Allies marched in; a soldier is planting a flag with the hammer and sickle on top of the Reichstag. Stalin, clad in radiant white, sits as if enthroned at the Potsdam conference of 1945, and we can glimpse into the glacial eyes of Hermann Göring at his Nüremberg trial.
The exhibition at the Berlin museum Martin-Gropius-Bau will later travel towards Kiev, in the Ukraine, Chaldej's native country. Free works are shown alongside commissioned series - an opposition that lies at the root of the work as a news photographer. Part of this show's interest is in studying the way Chaldej managed to juggle both polarities.
Jewgeni Chaldej, The Important Moment
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, May 9 through July 28, 08
