Atlas Gallery is pleased to present Masterpieces of Soviet Photography, a selection of photographs from the collection of celebrated sports photographer Lev Borodulin, known for his artistic images of athletes, skaters and swimmers.

Masterpieces of Soviet Photography reflects Borodulin’s long-lasting quest to collect and preserve images from a time when art was restricted to serve a Soviet socialist agenda. The photographs Borodulin collected over decades now constitute one of the largest collections of Soviet photography in the world and include prints by the greatest masters working in the medium such as Arkady Shaikhet, Yakov Khalip, Aleksandr Rodchenko, Boris Ignatovich and many others.

Borodulin began collecting during the early days following the end of the Second World War when he was asked to create a photo chronicle of battles fought by his former regiment. What started as a hobby became a lifelong passion. The collection grew as Borodulin continued to make friends with and acquire the work of famous military photojournalists such as Max Alpert and Dmitry Baltermants whom he shared a small darkroom with at Ogonyok, the Russian version of Life magazine in the 1950s.

Borodulin emigrated from Russia to Israel in 1972 to live in Tel Aviv but frequently returned to his homeland to rescue prints offered to him by insolvent picture archives and by photographers’ families no longer able to care for such artistically and historically important work. The collection was added to by his son, Aleksander Borodulin, also a prominent photographer, and has been exhibited worldwide including the Israel Museum, Jerusalem; the Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow and the Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War.