Alexander Georgievich Nagralyan was born on 17 July 1938 in Moscow. From childhood he dreamt of being a cameraman. He first started filming in the army and independently mastered the art of photography. In 1962 he had his first picture published in the army newspaper “Krylya Pobedy” (Wings of Victory).

In 1964 he enrolled in the camera operators’ section of the All-Union State Institute of Cinematography. He then completed a course in photo reportage at the House of Journalists, before beginning his career at the Literaturnaya Gazeta newspaper. In parallel, he worked with the Pravda, Komsomolskaya Pravda and Vechernyaya Moskva newspapers. In 1968 he was recommended to Dmitry Baltermants, a top Soviet photographer who worked at the Ogonyok magazine, which took him on as a photo correspondent.

Nagralyan photographed the big Soviet construction projects and major industrial plants, as well as eminent figures of the contemporary culture and arts scene - actors, film directors, singers and musicians. His lens captured numerous scientists and cosmonauts, doctors and teachers, top military leaders and Soviet statesmen. With Alexander Nagralyan’s help, those moments draw a picture of an era now lost forever. He was the man behind the famous photographs “Parade on Red Square (1970), reproduced on the cover of Living History, “Blast Furnace Worker at the Metals Plant” (1972), “The First Assault Team” (1974), showing Soviet citizens arriving at the BAM railway construction site, and series of photographs depicting the nations of the Soviet republics, the conquest of the Arctic, and the legendary Magnitogorsk steel plant, to mention just a few.

Alexander Nagralyan spent over a quarter of a century at Ogonyok, during which he produced numerous photo reportages and over 100 of his pictures appeared on the magazine’s cover. His last shoot for Ogonyok was during the putsch in August 1991.

Those events marked a turning point in the life of the country and of Alexander Nagralyan. From that day on, everything was divided into “before” and “after”. It was not easy for him to find his place in the radically new reality and to maintain warm relations with people whom he had regarded as friends for many years.

Alexander Nagralyan took part and won prizes in many exhibitions in the Soviet Union and abroad. In 2004 the Moscow House of Nationalities staged a personal exhibition of his work, entitled “Moments of History: Photo Portraits of Contemporaries”, and in 2014 his photo album Living History, to which this website is devoted, was published.

Alexander Nagralyan passed away in 2019 at the age of 81, but his work will always remain part of the recorded history of the Soviet period.