Pyotr Otsup

Pyotr Adolfovich Otsup (Пётр Адо́льфович Оцу́п; July 21 1883 – 23 January 1963), was a Soviet photographer, foreman of the historic photography. He worked in photo reporting genre and was taking a lot of historic events such as Russo-Japanese War, 1905 Russian Revolution, October Revolution in 1917, World War I and Russian Civil War. Pyotr Adolfovich Otsup has done nearly 40,000 photos.

He was born in 1883 in Saint Petersburg, Russian Empire. He got interested in photography in photo saloon, where he was studying during the 1890s.

His career started as he was a photo reporter during Russo-Japanese War. Beginning with 1900 he worked as a photographer in the magazine Ogoniok.

He created the photo portraits of different Russian artists, who worked before the revolution, like Leo Tolstoy, Sergei Rachmaninoff, Feodor Chaliapin and others; photo portraits of revolutionary politicians and leaders of the USSR, among which 35 portraits are of Vladimir Lenin, which were done during 1918-1922, and also the portraits of Semyon Budyonny, Mikhail Frunze, Kliment Voroshylov, Clara Zetkin, Mikhail Kalinin, Joseph Stalin, Nikita Khrushchev, Yakov Sverdlov, Sergei Kirov, Vyacheslav Molotov, Valerian Kuybyshev. From the pictures taken by Otsup the bas-relief was made for the Order of Lenin and the images of Lenin were used on the Soviet ruble, the Soviet currency.

He is the only photo reporter who was taking the pictures of the Second Soviet Congress.

From 1918 to 1921 during Russian Civil War he was taking pictures at the battle-fronts.

During 1918-1935 he was the Kremlin’s photographer. From 1919 to 1925 Pyotr Adolfovich was working in the Russian Central Executive Committee. From 1925 to 1935 Pyotr Otsup is responsible for the photostudio Russian Central council of labor unions.

On May 5, 1962 Pyotr Otsup was awarded with the Order of Lenin.

He died in 1963 in Moscow, Soviet Union.

Books with Otsup’s commitment

 * Anthology of Soviet photograph, 1917-1940 (in Russian) (1986). Vol. I-II. Moscow: Izdatelstvo Planeta.