Photographer Biographies
We have photographs from creators all over the world, going back to the 1920s. Below you can access the individual biographies and stories of photographers and photography studios who worked to capture the organisation’s involvement in Jewish working life, education and vocational training internationally.
Alexander Archer
Alexander R. Archer was a New York based photographer who worked with the labour movement. He documented an American ORT Labor Chapter welcome luncheon in honour of Dr Syngalowski in New York, held at the Hotel Roosevelt during his 1949 visit.
Shimon Bajer
Shimon Bajer was a creative and innovative photographer, offering a wide range of services beyond the traditional studio portrait. In the 1930s he was commissioned to take photos of ORT activities in the organisation’s Kaunas schools.
Freddy Bertrand
Freddy Bertrand was a Swiss photographer who studied horticulture in Antibes but became a photographer after settling in Paris in the early 1930s. In 1958 he documented Freda Feldman and Max Braude’s visit to Dr Syngalowski's grave in Geneva.
Chaskiel Bronshtein
Chaskiel Bronshtein was the owner of the Fotografika photography studio in Tarnów, Poland. Chaskiel was one of the signatories of the agreement that led to the establishment of the Tarnów Society of Photography Lovers.
K. Burak
Burak had a photography studio at no. 30 Warszawska Street in Kovel, Poland [now Ukraine] in 1927-1928. The studio was later listed under a B. and Sp. Burak, possibly the photographer’s children.
Israel Chomol
Israel Chomol was a Jewish photographer active in Hrodna between the wars. Chomol took several photos of ORT classes in Hrodna in 1927-1928.
Marcel Coen
Marcel Coen was born in Pau in February 1918. He spent five years in a concentration camp near Stuttgart during WWII. It was during the 1960s that he took a photo of a radio workshop at the ORT Bramson school in Marseilles.
Sándor Diskai
Sándor Diskai owned the Mona Lisa art, photography and painting company. In 1947 he was commissioned to take photographs of the ORT school in Budapest, as well as an exhibition of students’ work.
Judelis Fridman
Judelis Fridman was a well-known interwar Kaunas photographer. There are several photos taken by J. Fridman in 1930s Kaunas in the ORT archive.
P. Ganin
The stamp on the reverse of the photographs we hold at WO Archive notes Ganin as a press photographer, Moscow, Petrovka street. Ganin was a special correspondent of the of the Tribuna yevreiskoi sovetskoi obshche-stvennosti.
Leiba Meyerovich Gelgor
L. M. Gelgor (Leiba Meyerovich Gelgor) was a Grodno based photographer. He also took several photos of ORT courses and agricultural activities in his hometown during the 1920s-1930s.
Abram I. Ghiser
Abram Ghiser/Gisher was a Jewish photographer based in Kishinev, Bessarabia, Romania [now Chisinau, Moldova]. Ghiser photographed the ORT exhibition in Chisinau around 1928.
Émile Godefroy
Émile Godefroy was born on 29 July 1925 in Albi in southern France. He used black and white film until 1960. In 1963 he took a photo of the radio and television repair workshop at ORT Toulouse.
Percival Macdonald Goodchild
Percival Macdonald Goodchild was born in 1877 in Leamington Spa, England. In 1946 Goodchild was commissioned by British ORT to document its marine training programme aboard the ORT T.S. Joseph Hertz, moored on the Thames Estuary.
Moryc Grossman
Moryc [Moritz] Grossman was a Vilnius based Jewish photographer. His shop was located in the Zalkindas Chamber of Commerce, on the corner of Rūdininkų and Didšosios Streets. He took several photos of the ORT Technicum in Vilnius.
Ilja Jasvoinas
Ilja Jasvoinas was a Lithuanian businessman and photographer of Jewish origin active in 1930s Kaunas. Jasvoinas was commissioned to take pictures of activities at the ORT agricultural school and training farm in Kalinava in the mid-1930s.
Antanas Katilius
Antanas Katilius was a Lithuanian photographer active in the city of Pasvalys, Panevežys district in the 1920s-1930s. He took a photograph of ORT students working on a synagogue interior in Panevežys [Ponevezh] (1922-1927).
Itzhak/Itzik Khonovitch/Chonovitz
Itzhak (Itzik) Khonovitch was a Jewish photographer active in Vilnius in the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Khonovitch [senior or junior] took several photos of ORT school gardens in Vilnius during the 1920s-30s.
Boris Kowadlo
Israel Baruch [Boris] Kowadlo was born on 2 December 1911 in Plock [Plotzk], Poland. In 1947-1948, that he documented ORT activities in Amsterdam and at the children’s village in Apeldoorn.
Paul Kowaliski
Paul Kowaliski was a photographer and author and studied mechanical engineering in Warsaw. During the 1950s he was based at Rue Notre-Dame des Champs, Paris. It was around this time that he took a photo of ORT France students in a workshop.
Erwin Krongold
Erwin Krongold was a photographer born in Brno, Czechoslovakia on 4 August 1903. He is known to have worked in the UK and Israel in the post-war years. He took photos of British ORT courses in London in 1946.
Marc Lacroix
Marc Lacroix began taking photographs of street scenes of his Paris neighbourhood. He joined the French army in 1947 for his national service and served in Morocco. Lacroix documented the mechanics workshop at ORT Casablanca.
Mausha Levi
Mausha Levi was born Lithuania in 1886. He trained as a dentist at the School of Dentistry in Kazan, Russia from 1914, but never practised his profession. Mausha took a photo of an ORT gardening group at the Tarbut school in Ukmerge in 1922.
Leon Liberman
Leon Liberman was a São Paulo based photographer who specialised in architectural photography. During the 1940s he photographed the ORT school in São Paulo.
Michael Solomon Losakov
Michael Solomon Losakov was an Orhei photographer who owned a shop in the town before WWI. The photos we have by ‘M. Losakov’ are dated 1939 and depict the ORT school in Orhei, Bessarabia [then in the Russian Empire; later Romania; now Moldova].
Jan Malarski
Jan Malarski ran a photography studio with Karol Tawrel in Warsaw. He took photographs of ORT Warsaw students’ work. He also took a photo of an ORT exhibit at the Technicum in Vilna, which was part of Poland at the time, today Vilnius, Lithuania.
Jean Mohr
Jean Mohr volunteered helping Palestinian refugees for two years with the International Committee of the Red Cross and then UNRWA. During this time, he began taking photographs. Jean took photos of ORT courses in Athens, Greece after the war.
Carlos Moskovics
In 1942 Carlos Moskovics founded Foto Carlos. In May 1971 he documented the inauguration of the ORT Institute of Technology in Rio de Janeiro and in 1986 World ORT Director General Harmatz’s visit to ORT Brazil.
Jason Oddy
Jason Oddy, is a British artist and writer. In 1999 he was commissioned to travel to ORT schools document activities to feature in ORT’s 120th anniversary book “Facing the Future”. He visited Latin America, the USA, Israel, Russia and France.
Mendel Palnicki
Mendel Palnicki was a photographer who owned a studio named Foto Sfinks in Hrodna. The ORT archive holds several photos stamped "Sfinks, Lodz", which document ORT activities in Lodz.
Claude Perez
Claude Perez, b. 1942, is a photographer who worked in Tunisia between the 1950s and 1970s. He documented activities at ORT Tunis during the 1960s.
Charles Reyner
Charles T. Reyner was an information officer for the War Department in Washington. He had an artistic temperament and while visiting ORT operations in Germany took several photos of activities at the ORT Munich school in 1948.
Barnet Saidman
Barnet Saidman was a British photographer. Saidman was commissioned to record activities at the ORT Montreuil school in Paris and the ORT Anieres Institute near Geneva in the 1960s.
Zundelis Skaistis
Zundel Skaist served in the Russian army, where he learned to take photographs. He documented students at work in the ORT garden of the Skuodas [Shkod] school in 1923.
Peter Sohnwald
A photographer named Peter Sohnwald is known to have been active in several towns in Estonia and Latvia from 1889 to 1903. The photos in our collection, depict an exhibition of students' work at the ОRТ school in Riga, in May 1927.
Herbert and Leni Sonnenfeld
Herbert and Leni Sonnenfeld married in 1931. In 1952 Herbert Sonnenfeld documented the American ORT Federation Convention in New York. Leni Sonnenfeld was commissioned by ORT to document schools and events in Israel in the 1960s and in Iran in 1974.
Max Sternschein
Max Sternschein studied photography in Berlin and opened his own studio back in Czernowitz, specialising in theatre and ballet photography. He took many photos for ORT in the 1930s, documenting activities at the girls’ school in Cernauti.
Lilli Szkolny
Lilli Szkolny was a well-known illustrator and photographer who lived and worked in Berlin in the 1930s. In late 1938, just after Kristallnacht, she was commissioned by ORT to document activities at the Berlin ORT school.
Zaharia Weiss
Zaharia Weiss (b.1873) was a Jewish photographer based in Iași, Romania. He took pictures of ORT evening courses, and tailoring classes in Iaşi during the 1930s.
Wilhelm Willinger
Wilhelm Willinger was an Austro-Hungarian Jewish photographer who is best known for his portraits of actors of the early silent film era in Berlin. In Shanghai, he took a series of photos of the courses ORT ran for Jewish refugees.
Mordko Zinger
Mordko Zinger was a photographer in interwar Chisinau [Kishinev], Bessarabia, Romania [now Moldova]. He photographed the ORT students’ exhibition in Chisinau in 1925.