Nadav Kander photographed Evan Gershkovich for The Wall Street Journal. The images were taken in late September 2026 to mark the release of Gershkovich’s book, "This Cursed Beautiful Land." In the book, the American reporter reflects on his 16 months of wrongful imprisonment—an ordeal that ended in August 2024 following a historic prisoner exchange.
"So happy to finally be working with The Wall Street Journal," Nadav Kander remarked, expressing his enthusiasm for the collaboration.
As for the facts: On July 19, 2024, a Russian court convicted Evan Gershkovich—who had lived in Russia for five years and now resides in Berlin—of espionage. He was subsequently sentenced to 16 years in a strict-regime penal colony. Russian prosecutors alleged that the Wall Street Journal correspondent had gathered classified information about a tank factory in Yekaterinburg on behalf of the CIA. The Russian authorities never publicly presented any evidence to support these claims.
The trial was conducted as an expedited proceeding behind closed doors. Evan Gershkovich, The Wall Street Journal, the U.S. government, and human rights organizations such as Reporters Without Borders all rejected the accusations, condemning the trial as a politically motivated sham. Just two weeks after the verdict—on August 1, 2024—Evan Gershkovich was released as part of a major, historic prisoner exchange between Russia and Western nations.
In his book 'This Cursed, Beautiful Land'—published in October 2026—Evan Gershkovich provides a detailed account of how he was lured into a trap by the FSB, explaining that, to Vladimir Putin, he was nothing more than a "political commodity."
Evan’s parents, Ella Milman and Mikhail Gershkovich, are Soviet Jews who fled the rising antisemitism and repression in the Soviet Union, emigrating to the United States in 1979. His mother is originally from Saint Petersburg (then Leningrad), and his father is from Odesa (Ukraine).
We quote from the Amazon book description: "In March 2023, a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, Evan Gershkovich met with a union boss connected with a Russian tank factory. As the journalist sat with his source in an empty restaurant in an industrial city 900 miles east of Moscow, a squad of masked agents charged in, blindfolded Evan, and dragged him into an unmarked van. The agents were from the FSB, Putin’s powerful security service, and the successor to the Soviet-era KGB......
After his world suddenly shrunk to a tiny, cement-walled cell, Evan did something remarkable: he continued reporting. For the next sixteen months, he documented a life in Russia that few Westerners will ever experience: its sprawling prison system, with its own vocabulary and customs—and surprising pockets of humanity.
In writing by turns riveting and humorous, Evan brings readers inside the events leading to his arrest, his nearly 500 days in Russian prisons, and the blockbuster, multi-country prisoner swap that freed him. More than a prison memoir, This Cursed Beautiful Land is an extraordinary, deeply reported chronicle of a misunderstood people and their land—marked at once by stunning beauty and a haunting history."
Nadav Kander is represented by the agency LGA MANAGEMENT, Paris – London – NYC.
GoSee : evangershkovich.com/book
