"I shoot like a hunter. The camera hangs on a strap around my neck, swings at waist height, and when I see something I pick it up quickly - click. I have no patience. The camera has no meaning and no development, but only for that second, click, which is all the best you know, "Click, which will never come back, click. Take a thousand photos, click, click, click, and know how to choose the one, click."
In this sentence of the late photographer Peter Merom, who passed away about a month and a half ago at the age of 102, lies perhaps the great secret of someone who, after almost 20 years of professional photography, between 1956 and 1974, became one of the pillars of artistic and documentary photography in Eretz Israel. Which led to recognition for his work, when he won the Israel Photography Prize in 2010.
Merom, born in November 1919 in Germany, immigrated to Israel in 1934 with his father and stepmother.
In 1938 he joined Kibbutz Hulata in the north, where he has lived ever since.
He got involved in work in the fishing industry, which took place mainly in the nearby Hula Lake, and in 1944 he married Hannah Novak.
She was born in Romania in 1923, immigrated to Israel with her family at the age of 11, and in 1942 came to the kibbutz as part of a training program of the "immigrant camps" movement.
The two had three children, daughter Noa and sons Gil and Amir, and in subsequent years nine grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren.
Hannah passed away in 2000.
Merom began his photography career while working in fishing, as he said in an interview with the curator and photography historian Guy Raz, which was published in "Studio" magazine in 2000 and from which the sentence above appears.
In 1954, when he was already 35, he purchased a small pocket camera.
"With one hand I was driving a motorboat and sailing fast into flocks of birds, and with the other hand taking pictures," he said in the same interview.
"Peter was one of the founders of the infrastructure for free and artistic Israeli photography after the establishment of the state," says Raz, today the photography curator of the Israel Museum in Tel Aviv. For the environment. "
Already in his early years as a photographer, Merom gained fame, following the photo book "Song of the Dying Lake" published in 1960, in which he documented the dying process of Lake Hula after it dried up, in spectacular photographs of cracked soil, sunburned and longing for water.
Even earlier, in 1957, these photographs were shown in one of the first photography exhibitions in Israel, which took place at the Tel Aviv Museum, and later in many exhibitions around the world.
But it was not only Lake Hula that was photographed by Merom.
He traveled all over the country, photographing natural and urban landscapes, children and people, and published about 30 photo books, some for adults and some for children.
The texts that accompanied the images were written by authors such as S.
Yizhar, Haim Guri, Rafael Eliaz, Bina Ofek, Natan Yonatan, Zerubavel Gilad and more.
At the same time, he founded and edited Israel's photography yearbooks, in which the best photographers of those years took part, making him the first photography treasure in the country.
Both the books and the yearbooks sold well, and Merom even printed his photographs on wooden plywood boards, a project that also succeeded and turned his pictures into permanent residences in almost every home in the country.
Today, Marom's archive is in the hands of Buki Boaz (60), a businessman and Israeli photo collector from Caesarea.
"I have been collecting photographs since I was 16, but I became acquainted with Peter at a late age," says Boaz.
"One day, in 2000, I was in Tel Aviv, I saw the interview in the photo magazine 'Studio' and immediately made 144 and found out his number. I called him at the kibbutz, at Hulata, told him I was in the north and that I would jump in two hours - and I just drove north. membership.
"For many years Peter's collection was kept in an iron closet broken into every wind, outside the room where he worked on the kibbutz. He then went through several hands, including all sorts of museums and local councils. He gave things to everyone for free, but no one did anything with it. Thing, so in the end he passed it on to me, also for free.What I have today includes all of Peter's archive, for example all of his negatives and the rights to all the photographs.
"Beyond being a gifted photographer, Peter was also the first photography curator in Israel. In the photo journals he published, there were photos of all the considered photographers of that period, and he chose everything himself. Peter was not a friend of the photographers. He lived his life on a kibbutz in the north and did his own thing, and he would receive the materials from all the photographers in envelopes in the mail, and decide what went into that year's yearbook and what did not. One in the dining room, so it was very difficult to keep in touch.
"In general, my collection focuses on dead photographers and ancient photography, so the negotiation of purchasing the photographs is simple and egoless. The only photographer whose collection was passed on to me during his lifetime is Peter, a man who did not even have a shred of ego. In its conduct. "
"Photographing like a hunter."
The late Peter Merom,
Noa Merom Horev, the eldest daughter of Peter and Hannah, remembers: "Dad always went with a camera in his pocket or on his neck, pulled it out and took pictures of situations. He did not have the privilege of today, that you can take as many pictures as you want, and by clicking on the screen to transfer the pictures to the whole world.
"When I would ask him 'how do you choose this picture and not another?', He always said it was his hardest job, how to get the best out of the thousands of clicks he made. He was a very creative person, and also a very individualistic, who did not need To a man and always worked alone.
"In the kibbutzim of that time, artists did not think so much, and did not really give them the place they deserved. It was very important to Dad to do photography, and he understood that in order to be allowed to do so, he had to make a living. The fact that he photographs the children of the kibbutz twice a year, he gets a working day a week.
"Slowly, as he became famous and started publishing the books and photographic data, so that day expanded, and he became a profitable industry in the kibbutz. Later he started publishing the pictures printed on wooden plywood boards, which became a real factory. He was proud to be The factory with the highest income per person in the kibbutz, and always made sure that they did not say I was a parasite. And my brothers, of course, grew up living together.
"Dad also ran himself all those years. He had a well-developed sense of smell for marketing, and he would bring the writers who worked with him on the texts to the books, close the contracts with the book publishers, and even walk around the stores and distribute the books and photographs printed on the plywood.
"One day he just stopped filming. 'I ran out of horse,' he said, 'I became a producer of pictures - a producer.'
"He always told me he sees the aesthetics and beauty of the world, and that's something that is evident in both photography and all the other art he has created. He was also a person with a lot of special humor, and I think in his later art you see that humor more clearly. Dad was a business. "In painting, prints and engravings for a decade, until he also 'ran out of horse' there. He then worked as a sticker on the shoe boxes of the Daphne factory, which was in her patient. He was almost 80 when he said to me, ' .
Photos: Peter Merom, Reproductions: Efrat Eshel, from the Buki Boaz collection
Lakefront:
Fishing in Hula Lake, late 1950s
Merom began his career as a photographer in parallel with his work as a fisherman in Lake Hula.
His photographs from there, in which he documented the landscapes, animals and people who worked around him, brought him most of his publicity
The orchestra's visit:
children playing on the kibbutz, 1960s
Many kibbutzim in Israel had children's orchestras in the 1950s and 1960s, which played mainly wind instruments such as the flute.
To this day, many members of the kibbutzim remember melodies well, much thanks to the tough conductors, who did not give up any sound.
Song of the Pots: Toddlers on the Kibbutz, 1960s
Merom had a special fondness for children, and he photographed them for many books, such as "Lilac from the Ilanot Group" (1963) and "First Wonders" (1966), in which he documented the children of his kibbutz Hulata
Wandering Sands: A Girl in Ashdod, 1963
Not only the children of the kibbutzim were photographed by Merom, but also those who grew up in the development towns he visited during his photography trips throughout the country.
He got into his shoes: a boy and a cowherd in Kibbutz Hulata, late 1950s
These two photographs, published side by side, clearly show the "evolution" of the toddler in the kibbutz, who walks from the kindergarten to the parents' room, and will one day become a dairy cow.
Good Boy Jerusalem: Father and son in Jerusalem, 1966
Merom devoted several visits and several books to Jerusalem.
He photographed its people, landscapes and special light, which he managed to capture with his unique lens
The White City: A Couple in Tel Aviv, 1960s
The young Tel Aviv also came from above, and the text next to the photo reads: "A hard, masculine afternoon sun whitens the city, but when the light softens it seems to be healed, and then people bustle in it and build small bridges of light."
The Milky Way: A Cat Drinking Boy on Kibbutz Hulata, 1960s
As part of his never-ending rounds in the kibbutz yard, with the camera next to him, Merom caught a boy expressing the spirit of cooperation, sharing his milk bottle with a cat
Toy Story: A Girl with the Doll Ziva, Kibbutz Givat Haim, 1957
Every child in Israel knew the "puppet Ziva", the work of the mythological puppeteer David Ben Shalom ("Honzo") from Kibbutz Givat Haim.
Merom photographed the doll for the book, whose lyrics were composed by the poet Rafael Eliaz
Operation Sinai: Sinai Desert, 1968
In the years 1969-1968, Merom set out for the Sinai region.
In his photographs, which are the opening words of the book in which they were published, Azaria Alon wrote well about the mountains, dunes and sea of the peninsula, and the Bedouin who live there.
True to the original: a pair of flamingos in Lake Hula, late 1950s
In the Hula Lake, many types of winged animals have lived and still live today (in the reedbed), including spectacular flocks of flamingos, which have captured the eye and lens of Merom.
He used to sail in a boat, pull out the camera - and click
A cute duo: Kipo the monkey and Dish the fertilizer, Zoo in Paris, 1957
In 1957 he studied image development and printing in Paris, where he became acquainted with great photographers such as Henri Cartier-Berson.
At the zoo, he became acquainted with the friendship between a monkey and a fertilizer, which became a children's book with pictures and text by Benjamin Tammuz
The reins in the threads: a textile factory in Yeruham, 1963
In the 1950s, large textile factories were established in the development towns of Israel, employing many women, who also did not disappear from the sharp eye of Merom.
Queen of the Stage: Gila Almagor, 1965
In 1965, Merom photographed many theater actors in the makeup room, where, he said, "I found them all equal."
Each photograph was accompanied by text in the handwriting of the subject.
Gila Almagor quoted the philosopher Seneca and wrote: "You have no art as hard as life, which man must learn all his life"
First Lady: Hannah Rubina, 1965
"With all the love of life, with all the strong desire to live - if I had known that in my death I would help put an end to wars in the world - I am ready to die."
So, as today, the so human words of the mythological actress Hannah Rubina, alongside the photography of Merom, are really chilling
Paint on the Roof: Haim Topol, 1965
Not many know, but Haim Topol is not only a talented actor, but also an illustrator by grace.
To Merom's photograph, Topol added illustrations of the process of his entry into the character of Judge Azdek in "The Caucasian Chalk Circle", and wrote next to arrows: "With makeup - it is possible, it is possible, and it is possible"
Everyone was a builder: Yossi Banai, 1965
"Yesterday I saw an old and sad theater critic," wrote the late Yossi Banai in a text that accompanied the filming of Merom, "in all the halls comedies played."
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