Pesi Girsch

Pesi Girsch is a German-born Israeli photographer whose work deals with questions of life, death and Holocaust memory.

born 1954Photographs of dead animalsThe Natures Mortes seriesHolocaust memory in photographyTeaching at the University of Haifa

Born: 13 July 1954, Munich
Occupation: photographer

Pesi Girsch was born in 1954 in Munich

Pesi Girsch was born on July 13, 1954, in Munich to Holocaust survivors. In 1968 she immigrated to Israel with her mother and four siblings. She attended the Herzliya Hebrew Gymnasium.

She studied sculpture with Rudi Lehmann and drawing with Yosef Schwartzman. After army service she studied sculpture at the Academy of Fine Arts in Munich. In the 1980s she turned from sculpture to photography, which she studied at the art teachers college in Ramat Hasharon from 1982 to 1987.

In 1977 she moved with her husband to Zaire, and later settled in Tel Aviv. Her series include "Glory to the Photographer's Model", Natures Mortes, which shows dead animals in symmetrical compositions, and "Kinderstube" from 2008. Her works are held by the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum of Art and the Jewish Museum in Berlin, among others.

She taught photography at the WIZO France school in Tel Aviv from 1986 and at the University of Haifa from 1992, where she became a full professor. In 2014 she published the series "Secret Photography". Her daughter is the actress Kaipo Cohen.