attaché with a view

From Coudal Partners’ Fresh Signals, we learn about shutter-bug Major Martin Manhoff, who during his two year posting as military support to the US diplomatic Mission to the Soviet Union during the early 1950s, took full advantage of his time and access there to capture Stalin’s Moscow and beyond Red Square.
Suspected of espionage in 1954, Manhoff was expelled from the country and returned to the US Pacific-Northwest with hundreds of reels of film and thousands of photographs, forgotten until it was rediscovered by a Seattle-based archivist. Most famous for his unique, unfiltered perspective on the funeral procession of Josef Stalin, shot from a balcony of the Embassy with exclusive close-up footage, this collection curated and exhibited by Radio Free Europe (previously) in four parts showcases that unofficial documentation as well as many lesser known photographic forays.