Gidal Image Archive
The Gidal Image Archive is added to our graph.
Gidal Image Archive contains information on the image collection from Ignaz Nachum Gidalewitsch.
Nachum Tim Gidal (1909-1996)
Born in Munich in 1909, Ignaz Nachum Gidalewitsch grew up as the son of Orthodox immigrants from Russia. He studied history, art history and national economics in Munich, Berlin and Basle, where in 1935 he earned a doctoral degree for his study on the relation between photojournalism and the press. Even while he was still a student, his photographs were published in numerous illustrated weeklies. In 1936 Gidal emigrated to Palestine, between 1938 and 1940 he worked as a freelancer for the London “Picture Post” and during WW II he served as chief staff reporter for the British Eighth Army magazine. In 1947 he accepted the professorship for Visual Communication at the New School for Social Research in New York. In 1970 Gidal returned to Israel where he lectured as Associate Professor at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.
He is author of numerous publications such as the well-known pictorial documentation “The Jews in Germany from Roman Times until the Weimar Republic” or “Jerusalem in 3,000 Years”, a magnificent collection of photographs of the city. His work has gained worldwide recognition and he was awarded several prizes, among them the prestigious Dr. Erich Salomon Prize of the Deutsche Gesellschaft für Photographie in 1983.
He spent 40 years of his life working as a photojournalist for various newspapers and magazines such as the “Münchner Illustrierte Zeitung”, the “Jüdische Rundschau”, the A.I.Z., the “Picture Post” and the “Parade”; his pictures in “Life” in particular earning him international renown.
On the occasion of handing over his photography collection to the Steinheim Institute in Duisburg in 1989 Gidal declared: “I have decided to donate the collection to the Salomon Ludwig Steinheim Institute in Duisburg because I am convinced that by virtue of its lively involvement with old and new problems in history this institute will guarantee the continuous presence of my work in a wide circle.”
Gidal died in Jerusalem on 4th October 1996.
The collection
The Gidal Photography Collection comprises approximately 3,000 pictures documenting the history of Jews in Germany and Europe, covering in particular the areas of:
important Jewish persons (approx. 1,200 pictures) Biblical and antique motives Jewish world history culture and religion anti-Semitism and Nazism Link to the collection: Gidal-archive
The original collection has since been enlarged by:
pictorial documents from the estate of the actress and cabaret artist Ruth Klinger, mainly on the Yiddish cabaret “Kaftan” in Berlin, which she founded and directed from 1930 to 1933 together with her husband Maxim Sakaschansky, and on the author Arnold Zweig, whose secretary she was in Haifa from 1943 to 1947, a large number of photos and picture postcards with the focus on Eastern Europe (synagogues, schools, etc.) from the Werner Seewi collection, which was given to the institute on permanent loan.
Thanks to the Steinheim Institute for the data!
