Pyotr (Adol'fovich)Otsup
(b St Petersburg, 1883; d Moscow, 1963). Russian photographer. He was apprenticed to a portrait photographer at the age of ten. In 1900-17 he worked for several magazines, producing photographs chronicling society life and, from 1914, relating to World War I. During the February and October Revolutions of 1917 he took pictures on the streets of Petrograd (now St Petersburg), including armed detachments and demonstrations, as well as at the Smol'ny Institute. In October-November 1917 Otsup was put in charge of the photographic studio of the Revolutionary Military Council, and he subsequently headed the studio of the All-Russian Central Executive Committee. In Moscow in 1918 he took a series of notable portraits of Lenin and other leaders of the Soviet state, including Feliks Dzerzhinsky (1919). During the Civil War he made trips to the front to photograph the 1st Cavalry Army and the routing of the anti-Soviet bands in Central Asia. In the 1920s-1930s he photographed new construction projects and scenes of everyday life, taking portraits of political figures and working for many of the national newspapers, continuing his work after the war. Altogether he took over 40,000 photographs documenting the history of the USSR.
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