Evgeny and Yakov Henkin

Brothers Evgeny (1900 – 1938) and Yakov (1903 – 1941) Henkin were amateur Jewish photographers active in the 1920s and 1930s. They worked in parallel in two cultural capitals: cosmopolitan Berlin, capital of the Weimar Republic and post-revolutionary Soviet Leningrad (historically and present-day St. Petersburg). They used the recently developed small portable Leica and FED (Leica’s Soviet version) cameras which allowed them to capture scenes from everyday life: a couple kissing by a canal, children playing in a boat made from sand, athletic or holiday parades, family meals, and countryside vacations. It’s a hidden trove of leisure and intimacy.

In 1925, Evgeny left Russia for Berlin, where he nurtured his passion for the performing arts, particularly music, and even ventured into experimental art. He photographed scenes of bourgeois tranquility: families in public parks, cafés, and more. Yet even in his Berlin street photographs, ominous signs began to surface: anti-Semitic graffiti on Jewish storefronts, a campaign poster from Hitler’s party ahead of the 1933 elections, children playing under the Nazi flag, etc.

His brother, Yakov, was active in Leningrad at a time when Socialist Realism dominated, placing the worker, the farmer, and the soldier at the center, and celebrating industrial, agricultural, and social achievements. Yakov’s intimate, personal images offered an alternative to the state-controlled public discourse, presenting an authentic, human view of life under the regime.
In 1936, Evgeny returned to the Soviet Union. In January 1938, he was executed and buried in an unmarked grave. In 1941, when Nazi Germany invaded the USSR, Yakov volunteered for the Red Army. Wounded on the Leningrad front, he died of his injuries, and is buried in a military memorial cemetery on the city’s outskirts.

This is the first exhibition of the Henkin brothers in Israel. The striking black-and-white photographs on display were previously shown only at the State Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg, Russia, one of the world’s largest and most prestigious museums, and at the Street Photo Milano Photogtaphy festival in Milan, Italy. The Henkin Brothers Archive Association (HBAA), based in Lausanne, Switzerland, owns and manages the archive, which contains over 7, 500 negatives. The Archive is a unique visual trove of a lost world.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual catalogue, published in Hebrew and English and featuring photographs by Evgeny and Yakov Henkin, a comprehensive assessment of their photographic and cultural legacy by the exhibition curator Raz Samira, and several shorter texts on different aspects of the Archive.

The exhibition and catalogue were made possible through the generosity of the Fondation Le Cédre (Switzerland) and an Anonymous donor, as well as additional support provided by Leonid Solovyev and Elena Ziskind.

All rights to the photographic work of the Henkin Brothers are held by the Henkin Brothers Archive Association (HBAA) (Switzerland).