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ABSTRACT
This article explores previously undervalued aspects of Zionist and Israeli visual culture in light of the (newly recognized) significance of Jews in the history of photography. Zionism and the emergence of the State of Israel accrued a great deal of good will and benevolent publicity due to the historical confluence between Jews and the rise of photojournalism especially from the 1920s to the 1950s. The first part of the article focuses on Robert Capa, Chim (David Seymour), and Alfred Eisenstaedt, who were far more important, Berkowitz argues, than expressly Zionist photographers. The piece furthermore details little-known attempts to establish the history of photography as a discipline in Israel under the tutelage of (photographer) Arnold Newman and (photographer and photo-historian) Helmut Gernsheim. Despite the immense overrepresentation of Jews among eminent photographers, and the pioneering roles of Jews in photography, the Hebrew University and Israel Museum could have – but did not – become leading centers for the history of photography.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. A striking example of this turn is the “Exile Photography Workshop,” held under the auspices of Daat Hamakom: Center for the Study of Cultures of Place in the Modern Jewish World, the DAAD Walter Benjamin Chair, Department for German Russian and East European Studies, Division of German Language and Literature, and the Koebner Center of the Hebrew University, June 19–20, 2016, directed by Ofer Ashkeanzi. Some of the work relevant to this endeavor is Grossmann, “Negotiating Presences”; Ashkenazi, “The symphony of a great Heimat”; Morris-Reich, Race and photography; Nir, Bi-Yerushalayim uve-Erets Yisra’el; Azoulay, Civil imagination; Raz, Fotografie in Israel im Wandel der Zeit/La photographie en Israel au fil du temps; Sela, Le-’iyun ha-tsibur.
2. See Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain.
3. Berkowitz, “The Art Market in Photography”.
4. Salomon, Fotos (Photos) 1933–1940/Peter Hunter, 6–9, 14–39.
5. Young, The Mexican suitcase; Whelan, Robert Capa.
6. Beck, David Seymour.
7. Chéroux, Henri Cartier-Bresson.
8. Susan Goldman Rubin, Margaret Bourke-White; Stromberg, Power and paper; Goldberg, Margaret Bourke-White.
9. Eisenstaedt, Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt.
10. For a brilliant exploration of Halsman’s early life and controversy see Silverman, Becoming Austrians, 28–51.
11. Flukinger, Arnold Newman at Work.
12. See Morris-Reich, Race and Photography; Azoulay, “The Imperial condition of photography in Palestine,” 5–17.
13. Michael Berkowitz, “Photography as Jewish Space,” 257.
14. Ashkeanzi, “The Symphony of a Great Heimat”; Fima, Helmar Lerski; Helmar Lerski Lichtbildner.
15. Scheps, “Preface”; Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry, 127–36; Gelber, Melancholy pride, 87–124.
16. Bourke-White, Portrait of myself, 15–21.
17. Newhall, (private) journals, beginning September 3, 1952, “Paris-October 1952,” (no pagination), Beaumont and Nancy Newhall papers, box 243, file 2, Getty Research Institute, Los Angeles [GRI]; Romm, “How Magnum redefined and revolutionized photography.”
18. Lorant, I was Hitler’s prisoner.
19. Mosse, Toward the Final Solution.
20. Berkowitz, Jews and Photography in Britain, 127–8.
21. Garai, The Man from Keystone.
22. See “Horace ‘Tubby’ Abrahams,” website concerning the survivors of the HMS Repulse, available at http://www.forcez-survivors.org.uk/biographies/repulsecrew/abrahams.html [accessed August 15, 2017]; Lucy Townsend, “A photographic history of freedom,” BBC News Magazine, February 11, 2014, available at http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-25929351 [accessed August 15, 2017].
23. Cf. Brinkley, The Publisher. Brinkley does not realize the extent to which German-Jewish émigrés determined the character of Life; see Smith, “Émigré Contributions to ‘Life’”; Smith, “Germany’s Kurt Korff”; Oral History of British Photography, Stefan Lorant Interview with Alan Dein, 1994, Tapes 6: F3759, 7: F3760, 11: F3764, 12: F3765, British Library.
24. The beginning of disaffection with Zionist fundraising is discussed in Berkowitz, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 56–90.
25. Joachim Schlör has initiated research on photographers in Palestine; see, in his rich body of work, Schlör, Tel Aviv; Dvir, Rudi Weissenstein; Rubinger with Corman, Israel through my lens.
26. Duttlinger, Kafka and photography, 62–66.
27. Holitscher, Reise durch das jüdische Palästina, 80, 16; see Duttlinger, Kafka and Photography, 65–78, 98.
28. Berkowitz, “Jews in Photography,” 7–28.
29. Rosenkranz, Einstein before Israel, 181–208.
30. Battersby, “Andy Warhol’s ‘Jewish geniuses’”.
31. Low, Framing the Armenian genocide.
32. Engelman, Sigmund Freud Vienna IX; Weinke, Verdrängt, vertrieben, aber nicht vergessen.
33. See the cover of Newman, One Mind’s Eye; Frere, Fred Stein Paris New York; and Beckers and Moortgat, Atelier Lotte Jacobi.
34. Berkowitz, The Jewish Self-Image, 46, 83–5. Thanks to Philip Miller, Hebrew Union College, New York, for insight concerning the Halsman portrait.
35. See Timms, “The Literary Editor,” 52–67.
36. Ibid.
37. See Ernst Pawel, The Labyrinth of Exile, 51, 114–15.
38. Ibid., 72.
39. Ullstein, The Rise and Fall of the House of Ullstein; Freyburg and Wallenberg, Hundert Jahre Ullstein; and Kraus, Die Familie Mosse.
40. Schulte, Psychopathologie des Fin de siècle, 265–96.
41. Herzl, “The Program of Die Welt,” 76–8.
42. Slezkine, The Jewish Century.
43. See Anderson, Imagined Communities.
44. Berkowitz, Zionist Culture and West European Jewry; and Berkowitz, Western Jewry and the Zionist Project.
45. I owe this insight to Grant B. Romer.
46. Berkowitz, “Jews and Photography.”
47. The late Professor Robert L. Koehl encouraged me to examine the visual discourse of Zionist nationalization, with specific reference to Joyce’s Ulysses; Joyce, Ulysses, 59, 464.
48. This notion has been challenged by Gernsheim, but it is nevertheless repeated; see Gernsheim, Creative Photography, 102–14, 208–29.
49. There is hardly any attention to photojournalism in the seminal anthology Classic Essays on Photography.
50. Hargreaves, Daily Encounters, 18.
51. See, for example, the interviews in the “Refugee Voices” collection of the Wiener Library, London; Inge Ader, no. 25, 17–9; Dorothy Bohm, no. 82, 22–3; Ernst Flesch, no. 137, 17–18.
52. Gidal, Modern Photojournalism.
53. Gidal, “Jews in Photography,” 432–53.
54. “Dr. Erich Salomon”, draft of article for Encyclopedia Judaica, Peter Pollack papers, box 6, file 5, GRI.
55. Ibid.
56. Ibid.
57. Ibid.
58. Weizmann is pictured next to President Warren Harding in Palästina-Bilder-Korrespondenz (May 1929), 3; this magazine, which included numbers on pictures, facilitated the use of its photographs in other Jewish and Zionist periodicals.
59. “Lord Rothschild speaking during ‘Palestine Week,’ Friends Meeting House, London 1938,” and Weizmann and Leopold Amery, 1938, in Erich Salomon, emigrant in Holland, 152, 153.
60. Gidal, “Jews in Photography.”
61. Ibid.
62. Peter Pollack, draft of article for the Encyclopaedia Judaica, “EISENSTAEDT, ALFRED (1898–),” Peter Pollack papers, box 6, file 2, GRI.
63. Smith, “Émigré Contributions to ‘Life’”; Smith, “Germany’s Kurt Korff”; Oral History of British Photography, Stefan Lorant Interview with Alan Dein, 1994, Tapes 6: F3759, 7: F3760, 11: F3764, 12: F3765, British Library.
64. Ibid.
65. Whelan, Robert Capa.
66. See note 6 above.
67. Gellhorn, “Till Death Do Us Part,” 286.
68. [Cornell Capa], “THE CONCERNED PHOTOGRAPHER October 1, 1967–January 7, 1968,” Riverside Museum, 310 Riverside Drive at 103rd St., N.Y.C. 10,025, p. 3, Peter Pollack papers, box 6, file 5, GRI.
69. Seymour, “1932–1939, Working papers”.
70. Ibid.
71. Beck, David Seymour, 20, 44.
72. Bernard Drzewieski, Head, Reconstruction and Rehabilitation Section (Unesco) [to Chim], undated; Patricia Palmer [Public Information Officer, Unicef] to Mr. Seymour, February 21, 1949, D. Seymour, 1932–1939, Working papers (agencies that employed him), ICP.
73. TELEGRAM FROM MONTREAL[.] INSTRUCTIONS FOR ISRAELI ASSIGNMENT FROM FORTUNE MAGAZINE, April 23, 1952, Working Papers (second set), David Seymour, ICP.
74. D’Hooghe, “The Life and Death,” 42–49.
75. Whelan, Robert Capa; and Kershaw, Blood and Champagne.
76. Ibid., 5.
77. See Coleman, “Robert Capa on D-Day”.
78. Kershaw, Blood and champagne, 11–16; Schaber, “The Eye of Solidarity,” 12–19.
79. Capa, Slightly Out of Focus, 140–1.
80. Ibid., 148.
81. Ibid., 210.
82. Ibid., 235.
83. Robert Capa, letter to Mother, apparently about two months after D-Day (June 6, 1944), Robert Capa, “1944” file, ICP.
84. Letter from Philippe Halsman, May 27, 1954, Capa Condolence album, ICP.
85. Capa, Images of War, 156.
86. Capa and Shaw, This is Israel; also in Capa, Images of War, 160; Benor-Kalter, “Joy in Work (Kvutzah Schiller)” and “The Levant Fair, Tel Aviv,” in Photographs of the New Working Palestine, no pagination.
87. See note 85 above, 150.
88. Personal communication to the author from Moshe Caine, May 2, 2016.
89. Szymon Zajczyk, letter to a friend in Israel, 25 February; Item ID: 3539859; Record Group: 0.75-Letters and Postcards Collection. File number 129, Archival signature: 5531, Yad Vashem archives, Jerusalem.
90. Karl Katz, The Bezalel National Museum, to Arnold Newman, March 22, 1961, folder marked “Am-Israel Culture Foundation,” Box 33, Arnold Newman Collection, Harry Ransom Center (HRC), University of Texas, Austin.
91. Copy of a letter from Henry W. Levy to Miss Rachel Hubner, America-Israel Cultural Foundation, 32 Allenby Road, Tel Aviv, July 12, 1961, Box 33, Arnold Newman Collection, HRC.
92. Arnold Newman to Beaumont Newhall, February 15, 1968, folder marked “Am-Israel Culture Foundation,” Box 33, Arnold Newman Collection, HRC.
93. See Katz, The Exhibitionist.
94. Arnold Newman’s lecture notes for the “Jews in Photography” address, folder marked “Am-Israel Culture Foundation,” Box 33, Arnold Newman Collection, HRC.
95. Arnold Newman’s lecture notes for address at Bezalel, May 1979, file marked “Bezalel,” Box 3, Arnold Newman Collection, HRC.
96. Letter from Prof. Ran Schori, Director of the [Bezalel] Academy, June 8, 1982, to Arnold Newman, file marked “Bezalel,” Box 3, Arnold Newman Collection, HRC.
97. Helmut Gernsheim to Tim Gidal, January 2, 1976, Riess-Engelhorn Museum, Mannheim, German (RE).
98. Tim Gidal to Helmut Gernsheim, February 2, 1976, RE.
99. See Myers, Re-Inventing the Jewish Past.
100. Helmut Gernsheim to Meir Meyer, June 21, 1990, RE.
101. Helmut Gernsheim to Tim Gidal, February 25, 1976, RE.
102. Y. Nir to Helmut Gernsheim, March 29, 1988, RE.
103. “Focus East” and related material for Jerusalem trip, RE.
104. See note 100 above.
105. Meir Meyer to Helmut Gernsheim, undated [1990], RE.
106. See note 100 above.
107. Yeshayahu Nir, “Camera Judaica,” 139–45.
Additional information
Notes on contributors
Michael Berkowitz
Michael Berkowitz is Professor of modern Jewish history at University College London and editor of Jewish Historical Studies: Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England. Most recently author of Jews and Photography in Britain (University of Texas Press, 2015), he has held fellowships at Yad Vashem, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Center for Creative Photography (Tucson, AZ), and the Ransom Center (Austin, TX). His previous publications include The Crime of My Very Existence: Nazism and the Myth of Jewish Criminality (University of California Press, 2007) Western Jewry and the Zionist Project, 1914–1933 (Cambridge University Press, 1997), and Zionist Culture and West European Jewry before the First World War (Cambridge University Press, 1993 and University of North Carolina Press, 1997).