Vsevolod Tarasevich

Vsevolod Sergeyevich Tarasevich (1919–1998) is an established master of Soviet journalism. Born in Moscow, he moved to Leningrad after graduating from high school in 1937 and enrolled at the Leningrad Electrotechnical University. As a student, he got engaged with photography and soon began publishing his works in newspapers Smena and Leningradskaya Pravda. In 1939, he left the university as a volunteer for the Soviet forces in the war against Finland. From 1940 on, Tarasevich was a photo correspondent of the Leningrad branch of TASS. When the Great Patriotic War broke out, he began working as a photo correspondent for the political department of North-Western and later Leningrad fronts. After the war ended, he collaborated with Vecherny Leningrad newspaper over the course of three years. Then moved back to Moscow where he worked for VDNKh, magazines Sovetsky Soyuz, Sovetskaya Zhenshchina, Ogonyok, and others. In the mid-50s, Tarasevich was one of the pioneering photo correspondents who began to shoot on color film. In 1961, he joined the newly-founded Novosti Press Agency (APN). In 1963, he was awarded the World Press Photo Prize for the photograph Duel, which remains one of the most well-known pictures by the master. In the 1970s, Vsevolod Tarasevich became the dean of the Photojournalism Department at the Institute of Journalism, Moscow Union of Journalists. In the late 1970s and the 1980s, he published several photo books: My — Fiziki (‘We Are Physicians’), Svet Nureka (‘The Glitterati of Nurek’), and More, Lyudi, Zhizn (‘Sea, People, Life’). Vsevolod Tarasevich continued working for the Novosti Press Agency, which was later reorganized as Russian Information Agency Novosti, until his death in 1998.