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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. 

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive photograph

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.

Photographer photo

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.

Photographers photo

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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).

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive photograph

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.

Photograph of photographer

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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].

Archive Photograph

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.

Photographer photograph

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.

Photographers photograph

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.

Photographers photo

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Photographer photo

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Photographers photo

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.

Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.

Archive Photograph

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.