Background
Dmitri Kessel was born in 1902 in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine). He was born to the family of sugar beet farmers and landowners Solomon and Sonja Keselman.
Dmitri Kessel was born in 1902 in Kiev, Russia (now Ukraine). He was born to the family of sugar beet farmers and landowners Solomon and Sonja Keselman.
Kessel studied at the Poltava Staff Officers' School in Russia and at Rabinovitch School of Photography in New York City.
Kessel emigrated to the US via Romania in 1923 (naturalized 1929) to New York City and worked at part-time jobs in the fur industry and for Russian-language newspapers. Since 1972 he has freelanced for various publications, including Smithsonian, Time-Life Books and Life. He worked on contract for Time Inc., from 1967 to 1972, and previous to that was a staff photographer for Life (1944-67) and a war correspondent (1942-44). Kessel's assignments have included recording Greek liberation and the civil war in 1944-45 and photographing Czechoslovakia in 1937, before the German occupation.