Rudi Weissenstein

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Rudi Weissenstein 1940

Rudi Weissenstein (actually Shimon Rudolph Weissenstein ; born February 17, 1910 in Iglau , Bohemia ; † October 20, 1992 in Tel Aviv ) was an Israeli photographer. He was best known for his extensive photographic documentation from the everyday life of Jewish immigrants in the 1930s. The only photos of Israel's declaration of independence by David Ben Gurion in 1948 are from Weissenstein, who built up a collection of over a million negatives.

Life

Rudi Weissenstein was born in 1910 in the small Bohemian-Moravian town of Iglau and grew up as one of four children of a factory owner and a pianist in a middle-class family. From 1929 to 1931 he completed an apprenticeship as a printer at the graphic teaching and research institute in Vienna . He then did his military service in the Czechoslovak Army and then worked as a photographer for the Prague newspaper .

Weissenstein had been planning to emigrate to Palestine since 1934; He left Europe at the end of 1935 and reached Haifa in January 1936 . He continued to work as a photographer and journalist and in 1940 married Miriam Arnstein (1913–2011), who had studied dance and acrobatics in Vienna and had emigrated to Palestine before Weissenstein. Together they opened the Photohouse Pri-Or in Tel Aviv in 1940 in Rehov Allenby. Weissenstein documented everyday Jewish life and cultural life in Tel Aviv, numerous prominent personalities, above all artists and politicians, such as Marc Chagall , Max Brod , Eleanor Roosevelt , Isaac Stern and the painter Nahum Gutman . He has been shooting for the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra since the first concert conducted by Arturo Toscanini . Weissenstein's best-known photo is that of the declaration of independence of the State of Israel on May 14, 1948 by David Ben Gurion, where he was the only accredited photographer.

Rudi and Miriam Weissenstein in front of their shop, 1979

Photographic heritage

Rudi Weissenstein died in 1992; his estate - a photo archive of more than 250,000 negatives - was managed and looked after by his widow until her death in 2011 in the joint photo shop. Since 2011 the business has been run by grandson Ben Peter Weissenstein in a new shop on Tshernichovski Street. Miriam Weissenstein and Ben Peter Weissenstein were part of the documentary "Life In Stills" by Tamar Tal. Among other things, this dealt with the history of the Pri-Or photo shop, which Rudi Weissenstein had opened.

Negative archive of the photographer, detail

Weissenstein's photographs have been shown in numerous exhibitions in Israel and abroad and have been awarded prizes, including the 1961 prize at the International Photography Exhibition in Moscow for the “Working Hands” photo. The last exhibition in Germany, Your Happy Eyes, in 2010 was opened by Miriam Weissenstein herself.

Publications

  • Dvir Ori: Rudi Weissenstein. Israel Early Photographs. Modan Publishing House, Ben Shemen , 2008, ISBN 965-7141-10-9 .
  • Michal Amram, Anna-Patricia Kahn, Ben Peter (eds.): Rudi. Discovering the Weissenstein Archive . Kehrer Verlag, Heidelberg 2016, ISBN 978-3-86828-745-5 .

Web links

Commons : Rudi Weissenstein  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Text accompanying an exhibition in the Forum Gestaltung in Magdeburg 2013 , accessed on August 29, 2013.
  2. ↑ a b About Rudi. at www.pri-or.com, accessed August 8, 2011.
  3. ^ Igal Avidan: Pictures of a City. In: Tagesspiegel. April 5, 2009, accessed August 8, 2011.
  4. ↑ lifeinstillsfilm.com
  5. ↑ ( page no longer available , search in web archives: short bio Shimon Rudolph Weissenstein ) on heussenstamm-stiftung.de, accessed on August 9, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heussenstamm-stiftung.de
  6. ↑ ( Page no longer available , search in web archives: Tel Aviv's happy eyes: Heussenstamm gallery shows photographs by Rudi Weissenstein ) Heussenstamm Foundation press release from February 2010, accessed on August 8, 2011@1@ 2Template: Toter Link / www.heussenstamm-stiftung.de
personal data
SURNAME Weissenstein, Rudi
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Weissenstein, Shimon Rudolph (real name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION Israeli photographer
DATE OF BIRTH February 17, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Iglau
DATE OF DEATH October 20, 1992
Place of death Tel Aviv