Max Penson

• Name — Max Penson • Born — 1893 • Birthplace — Velizh, Vitebsk Governorate, Russian Empire (present-day Smolensk Oblast, Russia) • Died — 1959 • Place of death — Tashkent, Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic (present-day Tashkent, Uzbekistan) • Occupation — Photojournalist, photographer, artist • Website — maxpenson.com

Penson was born into a poor bookbinder's Jewish family in 1893 in the small town of Velizh in Vitebsk Governorate (present-day Smolensk Oblast, Russia). He soon moved to Vilno where he enrolled in the art school of S. N. Yuzhanin. In 1914, he was forced as a Jew to move with his family to Kokand in Turkestan. After the 1917 Russian Revolution he founded an art school in Kokand under administration of the Kokand Revolutionary Committee. He became the director and taught draftsmanship to 350 Uzbek children studying at the school. In 1921 his life changed dramatically when he obtained a camera. He would go on to become one of Uzbekistan's and indeed the Soviet Union's prominent professional photographers in the period 1920–1940, capturing its people and economic progression and made over 30,000 photographs by 1940. He moved to the Uzbek capital of Tashkent and from 1926 through to 1949 worked for the largest newspaper in Central Asia, the Pravda Vostoka (Truth of the East). During the 1930s he was particularly prolific in capturing the public engineering works in Uzbekistan and the industrialization of the cotton trade in the country. Penson's images were widely circulated by the Soviet news agency TASS and in 1933 his photographs featured in an extensive volume exploring economic progression in the Soviet Union entitled, USSR: Under Construction. In 1940 Penson met Sergei Eisenstein who said of him:

In 1948 the increase in anti-Semitism under pressure by Joseph Stalin forced Penson to leave his 25-year-long position with the Pravda Vostoka. Penson had three children. His son, Miron Penson, became a prominent cinematographer during the Soviet Era. His grandson, Maxime Penson, is a prominent commercial photographer, publisher, designer, and entrepreneur in Tashkent. Penson's relatives also include Ron Arad, a prominent Israeli designer, artist, and architect, and Atar Arad, an Israeli violinist, in addition to Boris Penson, a prominent Soviet Refusenik who was featured in the documentary Operation Wedding for his role in the Dymshits–Kuznetsov hijacking affair. Max Penson died in 1959 in Uzbekistan.

An extended gallery of Penson's works may be found on his website.