Yuri Abramochkin – reportage photographer

Yuri Abramochkin – living legend

Yuri Abramochkin is a unique photographer whose work has entered the golden fund of Soviet photojournalism. He gained international fame as a reportage photographer in the country in which the official position of news always was expressed with the phrase: “Nothing happens”. But even at that time he was a real photojournalist. Generally, reportage photographers (at least, the best of them) are often included in the history thanks to their photos. Abramochkin did it more than once. He took photos of all eight leaders of Russia in the last fifty years, and many leaders of other countries: Richard Nixon and four other American presidents, Yasser Arafat, Elizabeth II, Fidel Castro, Margaret Thatcher …

Abramochkin was born in Moscow in 1936. He became a photojournalist by accident at the age of 21. Yuri worked in the design office of Mosstroy, where he photographed drawings and plans. And suddenly, in 1957 he was offered to try his hand as an official photographer at the Festival of Youth and Students. At the same time, there was another event that determined the fate of his photos. Yuri took photos for Mosstroy at the Komsomolsk Prospekt and they were included in Soviet Weekly. It was a unique edition: Soviet newspaper for capitalist countries. You know, Yuri worked with it for almost forty years, and in 1961 he became an employee of the news agency Novosti.

Mathias Rust during the sentencing, 1987

Despite the many photos of politicians, popular artists and writers, as well as other celebrities, pictures of ordinary people still occupy a special place in his work. Many of the photos became classics of Soviet photography.
For more than fifty years of his work as a photojournalist Abramochkin gathered a very impressive collection of awards and titles. The most prestigious was the Golden Eye award at the international competition World Press Photo (1987) for the best picture of Mathias Rust.
Yuri is one of 15 Russian photojournalists included in the famous American encyclopedia Contemporary Photographers.
His exhibitions were held in Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Holland, India, France, Syria …
Great photographer died on April 5, 2018 in Moscow.
Below you can see the brightest photos of a “living legend”.
Official site: abramochkin.telemark-it.ru