Selected dates:

March 17, 1893

Born into a poor Jewish family in the city of Velizh (Vitebsk province, Russian Empire, territory of the current Republic of Belarus).

1911

He graduated from the Velizh City School, then studied for six months at an art school in Mirgorod, Poltava province, and then at the art and industrial school of the Antokolsky Society (in the decorative and painting department) in Vilna.

1915

Together with his family he moved to Kokand (Uzbekistan), where until 1917 he worked first as an accountant and at the same time as an art teacher at a local school.

1917—1922

He worked in the Kokand Department of Public Education as the head of educational and production workshops.

1923

By order of the People's Commissariat of Education he was recalled to Tashkent. Then, after staff reductions in the People's Commissariat for Education, he worked until 1925 as an accountant in a tobacco workshop in Tashkent.

Since 1925

I started making photo reports.

Since 1926

He began working as a photojournalist in the editorial office of the newspaper Pravda Vostoka. Collaborated with the magazine "USSR at Construction".

1937

His most famous photograph, a portrait of the “Uzbek Madonna,” depicting a liberated Muslim woman taking off her veil and breastfeeding her child, received the highest award at the World Exhibition in Paris.

1949

He was prohibited from continuing to work as a photojournalist. This ended his work as a public photographer.

1959

Died in Tashkent. He was buried in the European-Jewish Cemetery.

1998

Posthumous exhibition of the photographer's works in the Louvre (Paris, France).

2000

Posthumous exhibition of the photographer’s works at the Arts Center (Moscow, Russia).

2001

Posthumous exhibition of the photographer's work at the Bildens Hus Museum of Photography (Sunsvall, Sweden).

2003

Posthumous exhibition of the photographer’s works at the Moscow House of Photographs (Moscow, Russia).

2005

Posthumous exhibition of the photographer’s works at the Tashkent House of Photography (Tashkent, Uzbekistan).