Boris Carmi - Photographs from Israel

The Exhibition

Boris Carmi (b.1914, Moscow–d. 2002, Tel Aviv) is regarded as the founder of Israeli photojournalism and documentary photography. Leaving Moscow in 1930, he went to Warsaw first of all, then to Germany and Italy before finally reaching Paris where he studied ethnography at the Sorbonne and took up photography. In 1936, he left Paris for Gdansk where he spent three years waiting for an entry permit to Palestine. In 1939, on board a citrus freighter, he immigrated to Palestine where he first worked as a fruit picker and warehouseman until he made a profession out of his interest in photography.

For over 60 years, the self-taught Carmi followed the history of Israel with his camera, including the turbulent period of the state’s foundation and growth. He was the first photographer on the Israeli Army newspaper and, in 1948, recorded the War of Independence in impressive images that in Israel are now icons of collective memory. Working for Israeli newspapers and journals, he made quiet pictures of the enormous challenges faced by the young country. The faces he photographed tell of uprooting and new beginnings, determination to construct the new state and fear for the future. Never siding with any one party, Carmi instead explores the attitudes of the men and women living in a state that was searching for an identity and a sense of normality.

From mid-May 2004, the Akademie der Künste in Berlin will host the first solo presentation of Carmi’s work outside Israel. Being held under the patronage of the German President, Johannes Rau, and the Israeli President, Moshe Katzaw, the exhibition makes use of the late photographer’s large private archive that is now managed in Tel Aviv by his son. It will show photographs taken in the years following the foundation of Israel, in particular images of the 1948 War of Independence, the waves of immigrants arriving in the country from across the world, the reception camps established to house them, construction work in the 1950s and ‘60s, and the 1956 Sinai Campaign as well as images of everyday life in Israel and the growth of the city of Tel Aviv.

Boris Carmi’s imagery was very much his own and it contrasted with the official line of the Zionist movement and of the Israeli government of the day that stressed the theme of "arrival” and the ideal of a heroic "new Jew”. Typical examples of his work are the pictures from Israel’s early years. With great sensitivity, Boris Carmi photographed the personal tragedies and the vulnerabilities of immigrants from all over the world, from Baghdad to Berlin, and the inner conflict they experienced at having said goodbye to their past and the prospect of an uncertain future. As his gaze ranged across the country from one end to the other, Carmi photographed unknown heroes as well as personalities from the world of politics and the arts who all made major contributions to the construction of the country.

This panorama of Israeli history, as seen through the eyes of Boris Carmi, gives us an insight into a world that is now long gone. The photographer was both a discoverer and a narrator. Sensitive to the "here and now”, he preserved events from oblivion. To this day, his work conveys the outlook of a whole generation; beyond that, however, it also possesses a universal quality. Speaking of himself, Carmi said that he could photograph nothing ugly or unaesthetic, and described his style as "optimistic”. Delighting in his status as an observer, he sought out the "aesthetic and humanist” aspects amid the confusion of the years following Israel’s foundation; in an immediate and direct way, his work records the human angle – and every level of society. Boris Carmi continued to photograph until shortly before his death in September 2002.



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