Photo Sonia

The first Hebrew photographer, 1922 – 1948

 

The photographer, Sonia Kolodny (1901-1999) was one of the first Hebrew photographers in Eretz Israel. She belongs to the generation of Jewish photographers, most of whom emigrated from Russia in the early 20th century; within a Zionist-masculine photographic world she worked as a single photographer in Hadera, a moshava on the periphery. She was not sent on national missions and was not employed by the Zionist foundations, but in her photographs covered a region that without her pictures would have been missing from the history of local photography.
Sonia Kolodny came to Palestine and began photographing in the country in 1922. Before she came she studied photography in Warsaw. She opened her studio on the porch of her brother’s home in Hadera.
The photographs, dated between 1922 and 1948, primarily document life in the moshava of Hadera, before it became a city: kindergartens, agriculture and industry, nature and the environment, studio photograph, famines, weddings and events, sports events, soldiers and visits of important people. These photographs have never been shown before a general audience and they open a window to the history of a photographer unknown to the majority of the followers of local photography.
The exhibit was made possible for the Khan Museum of Hadera

Curator: Guy Raz
Opens November 10, 2006, closes April 25, 2007