Shaikhet, Arkady Samoilovich

He was born on August 28 ( September 9 ), 1898 in Nikolaev (now Ukraine ) into a poor Jewish family: his father sold draft beer, his mother kept a small seamstress workshop.

He graduated from grade 4 of elementary school. I could not enter the gymnasium because of the educational qualifications for Jews that existed in those years, so I began to work as a mechanic's assistant at the Nikolaev Shipbuilding Plant .

In the Civil War he served in the Red Army in a brass band . During the service he suffered from severe typhus with heart complication.

In 1922 - 1924 he worked as a retoucher in a private photograph of Rembrandt in Moscow, located on Sretenka . It was at this time that a prominent Soviet official, executive secretary of ROSTA Dmitry Brazul, who saw a penchant for creativity in A. Shaikhet, advised him to pay attention to the genre of the photo story, which had a decisive influence on his future life. Soon, the first photos of Shaikhet appeared in the then popular “ Working Newspaper ” (the illustrated application “Screen”).

In the summer of 1923 he was invited to the editorial office of the weekly Moscow Proletarian magazine, and over the next few years his photographs adorned the cover and the central spread of this publication.

Since 1924, he collaborated with magazines ( Ogonyok , USSR at a Construction Site , Our Achievements ), creating a photo chronicle of the first five-year plans in his reports.

On behalf of the editorial staff filmed Lenin's funeral. In the terrible January frost, he managed to make only 2 frames, then the frozen shutter refused. In the same year he made the first photo report from the May Day parade. It is starting from these photographs that he begins to use the diagonal construction of the frame, which later became one of the hallmarks of his style.

In 1925, Shaikhet in Ogonyok published a series of photographs dedicated to the completion of the construction of the Shaturskaya CHPP . Among them were photographs that became symbolic: “ Ilyich ’s lamp ” and “Opening of the Shatursky power station”.

In the spring of 1926 he participated in the first exhibition of photo essays organized by the Association of Moscow Photographers.

On June 24, 1927, he was arrested by the NKVD on a false denunciation, was held in Butyrka prison . At the OGPU during interrogation, he was charged with “being convicted of transferring photographs not subject to publication abroad for remuneration to the Polish diplomatic mission”. Released on a subscription to appear to the investigator. Rehabilitated in 2006 .

In 1928, he participated in the grandiose all-union photo exhibition “Soviet Photography for 10 Years”, exhibited in the halls of the former Hunting Club on Vozdvizhenka , and in January 1930, the exhibition of photographers “Spark” was opened, including Shaikhet (the same year shown in London ).

In the summer of 1931, the Society of Friends of the USSR in Austria decided to arrange an exposition of photographs reflecting the course of socialist construction in the USSR . A special section was the series “Moscow Worker’s Day”. Filming of the working family of metalworker Filippov was carried out by a team of photographers A. Shaikhet, M. Alpert , S. Tules and editor-in-chief L. Mezherich. After the exhibition, the communist German weekly magazine “Arbeiter illustrierte Zeitung” devoted a separate issue to the material entitled “24 hours from the life of the Moscow working family”, which made a splash in Germany and Austria . The half-million circulation of the weekly quickly spread, and it was reprinted.

In April 1934 he filmed a meeting of Chelyuskinites for the newspaper Pravda .

He was one of the 23 participants in the exhibition of masters of Soviet photography, held in Moscow in the summer of 1935 .

Since 1938 he worked in the Illustrated Newspaper. The symbolic photograph of A. Shaikhet Express, 1939, is widely known.

During World War II, he shot a lot at the front as a correspondent for the Front-line Illustration newspaper. Photographs of Shaikhet were published in the newspapers Pravda , Krasnaya Zvezda , and Komsomolskaya Pravda . He photographed military operations on various fronts, including near Moscow , near Stalingrad , on the Kursk Bulge , during the capture of Berlin . According to eyewitnesses, filmed at the forefront, participated in battles.

In 1944, for the feat near Königsberg he was awarded the Order of the Red Banner : in an editorial machine, along with the driver Arkady Shaikhet removed the wounded from the battlefield.

I photographed the meeting of the winners at the Belorussky railway station in the summer of 1945 .

In the post-war years, he again worked intermittently in the magazine " Spark ": during this time he survived 3 heart attacks .

Died November 18, 1959 from a 4th heart attack during a shoot for the magazine Young Technician .

He was buried in Moscow at the Armenian cemetery .

• Order of the Red Banner (05.19.1944) ^[1]
• Order of the Patriotic War II degree (09/20/1945; was presented to the Order of the Red Star) ^[2]
• Medal "For the Defense of Moscow"
• Medal "For the Defense of Stalingrad"
• Medal "For the capture of Berlin"
• Medal "For the victory over Germany in the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945."

• 2012 - “Arkady Shaikhet. To be continued. 1928-1931 ” ^[3] Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow . ^[four]
• 2014 - “Arkady Shaikhet. Photos 1932-1941 »Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow.
• 11.III — 10.IV.2016 - “Arkady Shaikhet. 1945-1959. Episode 4 ”Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow ^[5] .

• Album of Arkady Shaikhet from the PHOTO HERITAGE series. Art Rodnik Publishing House 2007.

• "Anthology of Soviet Photography, 1917-1940" PLANETA Publishing House, Moscow 1986
• "Anthology of Soviet Photography, 1941-1945" PLANETA Publishing House, Moscow 1987
• PROPAGANDA & DREAMS, Edition Stemmle 1999 ISBN 3-908161-80-0

• Valery Stigneev. Arkady Shaikhet. - Art Rodnik: 2007. - 96 p. - ISBN 978-5-9794-0069-3 .

• Bolshevik Mystic of Light: Arkady Shaykhet at the Museum of Private Collections (unopened) (unavailable link) . Date of treatment April 8, 2005. Archived May 24, 2005.
• Photo album (neopr.) . Date of treatment April 8, 2005. Archived September 27, 2007.
• Gallery (unopened) (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment April 8, 2005. Archived April 13, 2008.
• Our victory. Day after day - RIA Novosti project: Photos of Arkady Shaykhet (neopr.) (Inaccessible link) . Date of treatment June 14, 2005. Archived January 4, 2006.
• Victory. 1941-1945 Shaikhet Arkady Samoilovich (1898-1959) (unopened) (inaccessible link) . Date of treatment November 15, 2007. Archived August 21, 2007.
• Rosfoto: Arkady Shaikhet. "March of the time"
• Foto.ru: Arkady Shaikhet - life and work