Pyotr Otsup

Who was Pyotr Otsup?

Pyotr Adolfovich Otsup, 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 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.