Add Category
For many Australians, the striking image of Evdokia Petrov being escorted by two burly KGB agents onto a plane to fly back to the Soviet Union is etched in their memories even 70 years on.
About 1000 angry anti-communist protesters descended on Sydney airport in April 1954, while police, security officers, and airport officials fought for eight minutes to get Petrov on to the plane’s gangway.
Evdokia Petrov being tightly gripped by a Russian bodyguard leading her across the tarmac at Mascot in 1954. Credit: R L Stewart
She and husband Vladimir, both Soviet spies masquerading as diplomats, would later be released in Darwin and seek asylum in Australia.
What became known as the Petrov Affair captured the imagination of the nation.
A month after the dramatic airport scene, University of Sydney students recreated it in a float in their annual parade, known as the commemoration day march, in the streets of Sydney.
Photographer Max Dupain was on the ground to capture the moment, snapping an image that is part of a new exhibition to open at the University of Sydney’s Chau Chak Wing Museum, on August 9.
Max Dupain’s most famous photo, Sunbaker.Credit: State Library of NSW
While he may be best known for snapping the head and shoulders of Harold Salvage, lying on the sand at Culburra Beach on the NSW south coast, in his famous shot the Sunbaker, between commercial work Dupain spent a lot of time on campus at Australia’s oldest university.
Although a graduate of the National Art School (then known as East Sydney Tech), Dupain knew the university well, having worked there as an architectural photographer shooting many of the university’s then new, modernist buildings.