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Viktor Temin. Photoreportage of the Epoch

85 years ago, photojournalist Viktor Temin came to the stanitsa Vyoshenskaya to Mikhail Sholokhov. This was the first photo correspondent to come a thousand kilometers away from Moscow to make a report about the writer.

He took a lot of expressive photos depicting Sholokhov approaching the thirtieth anniversary. “Hunting camps” is the series of these photographs: the writer with his eldest son Alexander, with friends Vasily Kudashev and Yury Lukin, who came from Moscow to hunt. V. Temin introduced the country to the everyday life of Mikhail Sholokhov. These photos are also interesting because at the time when they were taken (in 1935), Sholokhov continued to work on the immortal epic “And Quiet Flows the Don”, which in those years had already won the love and recognition among readers not only in his native country, but abroad as well. His stories, chapters from novels were actively published in newspapers and magazines.

The photographs of Viktor Temin are well known; they have been published more than once in various publications devoted to the life and work of Mikhail Sholokhov.

Viktor Temin was born in 1908 in the Kazan province, in the family of the rector of the church. He took his first picture for a newspaper when he was still a schoolboy. From that moment on, photography became the work of his life. Temin worked in “Pravda”, “Izvestia”, “Krasnaya Zvezda”, “Ogonyok”, TASS.

He happened to shoot many significant events that glorified our country all over the world: the first expedition to the North Pole, the epic of saving the Chelyuskites, the flights of Chkalov, Belyakov and Baidukov, the first flight of female pilots on the plane “Rodina”, the expedition to the Arctic on the icebreakers “Taimyr”, "Murmansk", "Ermak", "Sadko".

During the Second World War he was a front-line correspondent, shot the signing of the Act of Japan's surrender on the cruiser “Missouri”, and covered the progress of the Nuremberg trials.

In the photos taken in 1935, Sholokhov is young, full of strength and energy. That is how Viktor Temin saw the writer that distant year. Thanks to his photos, Mikhail Sholokhov will remain like that for many generations. 

Larisa Bukina