Art and designישראל צפריר

Israel Zafrir

Israel Zafrir was an Israeli photographer who documented works of art for Israeli artists and museums.

1911 to 2016Photographing Israeli works of artThe Israel Zafrir archiveDocumenting the New Horizons artists

Born: 8 June 1911, Tel Aviv
Died: 3 December 2016
Occupation: photographer

Israel Zafrir was born in 1911 in Tel Aviv

Israel Zafrir was born in 1911. His parents were Solomon Glaser and Regine Rifke Baumöhl. In 1913 the family moved to Vienna, where they lived in the Ottakring district.

He came to British Palestine in 1935. He and his wife Georgette lived in Bat Yam. The couple divorced late in life.

From the 1950s he photographed artworks for artists and museums. His pictures appeared in art catalogs and books, including Art in Israel edited by Benjamin Tammuz. He worked with members of the New Horizons group, such as Yosef Zaritsky, Yitzhak Danziger and Yechiel Shemi.

In the 1960s he showed exhibitions of his photographs of monuments and statues. He exhibited at Yad Lebanim in Petah Tikva in 1960 and at a youth center in Ramla in 1966.

In 2002 he donated his collection to the Information Center for Israeli Art at the Israel Museum in Jerusalem. The archive holds about 20,000 photographs and negatives of works by 87 Israeli artists. In 2014 a project with Harvard Library began to digitize it. He died in 2016.