Olga Lander

Olga Alexandrovna Lander (; 10 April 1909 – 19 September 1996) was a Soviet documentary photographer and journalist who studied photography with Moses Nappelbaum and David Sternberg. After graduating from high school in Samara, she moved to Moscow to attend the Moscow State Stroganov Academy of Industrial and Applied Arts in 1927. She also began to work with photographer

From 1930 Lander worked for the film studio Tadshikfilm, traveling in Central Asia. Galina Sankova, Yelizaveta Mikulina and Natasha Bode. For much of the war, Lander's photographs were published with the credit of "O. Lander", which gave no indication of gender. By March 1944, she was credited as "Olga Lander". Over 1500 of her photographs were published in newspapers in the 1940s, showing both daily life and front line battles across Yugoslavia, Romania and Hungary.

During the war, Lander used an FED camera, a Soviet copy of Germany's Leica camera. Lander's camera had a fixed 50 mm focal length, which meant that Lander could not zoom in on her subjects. To take photographs she had to be close to the action, despite the dangers this posed in war-time.

After her discharge from the army, Lander returned to Moscow, where she worked in the photographic department of Exhibition of Achievements of National Economy (VDNH). Lander eventually began to work as a photographer for the newspaper Sovetskaya Rossiya, which was first published in 1956. She remained there until her retirement in 1974. Her work was included in An Anthology of Soviet Photography, 1941–1945 (1987). She died in 1996. 2011, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes, CU Art Museum, University of Colorado Boulder 2013, Soviet photography, State Russian Museum and Exhibition Centre for Photography, Saint-Petersburg 2017, Olga Lander. The Supplemented Reality of the War, Museum of Military Uniforms, Moscow 2017–2018, Wartime and Adventure, Women Photojournalists in Europe 1914 – 1945 / Kriegsalltag und Abenteuerlust, Kriegsfotografinnen in Europa 1914–1945, Das Verborgene Museum 2018, Olga Lander – Sowjetische Kriegsfotografin im Zweiten Weltkrieg (Olga Lander – Soviet war photographer in the Second World War), Deutsch-russisches Museum, Karlshorst 2021, Yevgeny Khaldei. The Photographer of the Liberation (Jewgenij Chaldej Der Fotograf der Befreiung), Jewish Museum Vienna (also included photographs by Olga Lander) 2021, Communism Through the Lens: Everyday Life Captured by Women Photographers in the Dodge Collection, Norton and Nancy Dodge Collection of Nonconformist Art from the Soviet Union, Zimmerli Art Museum, Rutgers University