Yuri Grigorievich was born into a working-class family, his father worked as a chauffeur, and his mother was a seamstress. After graduating from school, he entered the Tyumen Forestry Technical College, but for family reasons, he left to work at a factory of automotive electrical equipment from the second year of study.
At the age of seventeen, Yuri Grigorievich began to cooperate with the regional youth newspaper "Tyumen Komsomolets". In 1957, he was invited to the staff as a photojournalist. The young specialist was sent to study at the correspondence department of the University for photo and film reporting at the Central House of Journalists in Moscow.
The young photojournalist took pictures not only for his publication, but also published in the main newspaper of the Tyumen region "Tyumen Truth". In 1980, he was invited to join the staff of this publication, where he worked until the last.
Yuri Grigorievich belonged to the younger generation of Pentecostals and his zeal for work was reflected in his photographs. And there was something to shoot, the region was developing by leaps and bounds, life was raging in all its corners, and much was with the word first.