Valery Faminsky was born May 15, 1914 in Moscow. He was an artist by education. Before the war he worked in the photo laboratory at the plant "Aviakhim" in Moscow. He was not drafted for the army service with a "white ticket" because of severe eyesight. When the war broke out, he really wanted to go to the front as a military photo correspondent, but received numerous rejections for health reasons. From 1943 to 1945, thanks to his stepfather, the artist Kotov, a volunteer with the rank of soldier, Valery Faminsky went to the front as a photographer on assignment of the Military Medical Museum of the Red Army. Faminsky visited seven fronts of the Second World War. He participated in the liberation of the Crimea and the entry of Soviet troops into Berlin. He was awarded the Order of the Red Star, the Order of Patriotic War II degree, the medal "Veteran of the Great Patriotic War", "Veteran of Labor".

After the war more than 40 years he worked as a photographer in the Moscow City Branch of the Art Fund of the RSFSR. Valery Faminsky died on September 8, 1993 in Moscow and was buried at the Nikolo-Arkhangelsk cemetery.