“RUSSIA’S GREATEST COMBAT PHOTOGRAPHER”: KHALDEI’S ICONS OF WAR, WITH ORIGINAL GELATIN SILVER PHOTOGRAPH, NUMBER TWO OF ONLY 100 PRINTED, SIGNED BY KHALDEI

KHALDEI, Yevgeny. Icons of War: Yevgeny Khaldei, Soviet Photographer World War II. WITH: Photograph signed. (Tel Aviv: Beth Hatefutsoth, 1999). Quarto, original black paper-covered boards, original photographic dust jacket. Original gelatin silver photograph (8 by 6-1/2 inches) housed in protective case. $3500.

First edition of this major retrospective of Kaldei’s work, accompanied by a vintage gelatin silver photograph, number 2 of only 100 printed, signed by Khaldei on the verso, showing Russian poet Yevgeny Dolmatovski holding a plaster head of Hitler in a photograph taken by Khaldei in Berlin, on May 2, 1956.

“Best known for his shot of Russian soldiers hoisting their flag over the Reichstag as Berlin fell in 1945, Yevgeny Khaldei [was] Russia’s greatest combat photographer, a 20th-century master” (New York Times). Khaldei “worked as a front-line photographer throughout the Second World War… Afterwards he covered the Potsdam Conference and the Nuremberg Trials. He suffered anti-Semitic persecution in the 1950s, but later returned to work for TASS and Pravda” (Lenman, 341). This volume appeared in conjunction with an exhibit commemorating the 60th anniversary of the outbreak of WWII, held in Tel Aviv at Beth Hatefutsoth, the Nahum Goldmann Museum of the Jewish Diaspora. Icons of War features Khaldei’s own commentary and 90 powerful photogravures-including images of Stalin, Goering and Khaldei’s iconic “Raising the Soviet Flag Over the Reichstag,” some published here for the first time. With a foreword by Prime Minister Ehud Barak; essays by historian Matitiahu Mayzel and curator Rachel Schnold. Text in Hebrew and English.

An exceptionally fine copy, with scarce signed photograph.