Peter Merom

Peter Merom was born in 1919 in Jawor

Peter Merom was born on November 1, 1919, in Jawor in Lower Silesia, Germany. In 1934, after the Nazis came to power, he moved to the Land of Israel with his father and stepmother. In 1938 he settled at Kibbutz Hulata, where he worked as a fisherman.

At the kibbutz he met Hana Novak, and they married in 1944. They had 3 children, and he remained married to her until her death in 2000.

Merom taught himself photography from professional books and international magazines and yearbooks. Through his work as a fisherman he began photographing Lake Hula and documented its draining. In 1957 he trained in photography in France and worked in Paris as a photo printer.

Photographs from his series on the dying lake were shown at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and his book on it appeared in 1960. From 1963 to 1970 he published a yearly Israeli photography annual. In 1974 he stopped working as a photographer and opened a business selling prints from his archive on plywood.

In 2000 he received a lifetime achievement award in photography from the Israel Museum, and in 2010 he won the Israel Prize. He died on February 20, 2022. His photographs and archive are part of the Boki Boaz photography collection.