The exposition on display at the “Botanique” of Brussels until the end of the year, “Khaldei, a photographer under Stalin”, features works from Mark Grosset’s (1957-2006) personal collection. Grosset was the son of Rapho agency’s founder and former Director.

“Evgueni (Yevgeny) Khaldei (1917-1997) came to me” wrote Mark Grosset in a Khaldei monograph published in 2004, “aside from his historic May 2, 1945 shot of Russian soldiers on the roof of the Berlin Reichstag,the rest of his work is known only by a select few people”. Comprised of one hundred “vintage” prints, the exposition includes two versions of the famous red flag, but the majority of pictures show different aspects of Soviet life during the “camarade Stalin’s” dictatorship.

The exposition was organized thanks to the generosity of Mark Grosset’s widow, Claudine, and to the determination of Michel Bouvier, a bookseller in Paris and friend who administrates the “Mark Grosset Photographies” society, created in 2002 to promote the work of Russian photographers.

In November, 2008, thanks to the Calypsor Foundation directed by Bernard Skalli, this exposition was inaugurated at the BNP-Paribas branch in Luxembourg. Displayed there during the height of that year’s major financial crisis, the presence of a portrait of Stalin hanging on the wall of this financial sanctuary was rather provocative, but the bankers were more than good players. Thanks to their persistence, Bernard Skalli and Michel Bouvier convinced Annie Valentini, the Botanique’s director, and her chief curator, François Delvoye, of the necessity to share these pictures with their Belgian public.

Mark Grosset traveled to the USSR for the first time in 1988, thanks to gallery owner Marie-Françoise George. He met many photographers there and literally fell in love with their little and poorly known works. In 1995, he was present for the historical meeting organized by his friend Jean-François Leroy between Evgueni Khaldei and Joe Rosenthal at the Visa pour l’Image Festival in Perpignan. The illustrious picture taken by Joe Rosenthal of two American soldiers holding the flag on Iwo Jima on February 26, 1945, was the inspiration for the May 2, 1945 shot immortalizing the Nazi surrender. From 1988 to his death, Mark Grosset would make countless trips to Russia, living for weeks in a little apartment in the suburbs, spending his days visiting with friends from the Union of Russian Photographers. For Khaldei, it wasn’t just propaganda photography that interested him, but the photography forbidden for years, because it was Jewish.

After Evgueni Khaldei’s death, he suggested to Anna and Leonid, his two children, that he take possession of all of their father’s negatives. That is when his enormous project began, gathering and sorting the photographer’s entire production. “After 18 months and over 15 trips to Russia at the Photographer’s Union, I finally saw all of the negatives” he wrote in the introduction to “Khaldei, a photoreporter in the Soviet Union”, a richly illustrated monograph published, unfortunately, only in French, by the Editions du Chêne. He also took on the task of acquiring official recognition for Khaldei’s work, and that of his peers. Distributed via Stalinian propaganda, Khaldei’s work has been seen around the world without any financial compensation to his family, despite the international agreement signed by the Russian Federation. “In honor of Mark Grosset’s memory, we will continue to fight for this” says Michel Bouvier.

In 1980, the year of our first meeting with the agency The Reporter’s Company, Mark Grosset and I became close friends. An affectionate friendship, based on a professional exchange. I can attest to my skepticism when he began his research in the USSR, and even my worries, but especially to the incredible amount of work he accomplished with his characteristic stubbornness, to his dying day, just prior to the release of his second book, “The Stalin Years” that he worked on with historian Nicolas Werth. Every time he returned from Moscow, he was like a happy little boy showing off his treasures. “Did you see this picture? It looks like New York! But no, it’s Moscow!”. With a picture of life’s joy in his hand “Can you believe they didn’t have anything to eat at the time?” His fight was to bring masterpieces like the works of Evgueni Khaldei out of hiding, visible now both in his book and currently on display in Brussels.
Michel Puech

Exposition at the Botanique Brussels
Mark Grosset Photographies