Art and designזולטן קלוגר

Zoltan Kluger

Zoltan Kluger was a Hungarian-born photographer who documented life in Mandatory Palestine and early Israel.

1896 to 1977Photographing Mandatory Palestine1937 aerial photographsArchive of 50,000 negatives

Born: 8 February 1896, Kecskemét
Died: 16 May 1977, Manhattan
Occupation: photographer

Zoltan Kluger was born in 1896 in Kecskemét

Zoltan Kluger was born in 1896 in Kecskemét, Hungary. During World War I he served as an aerial photographer in the Austro-Hungarian air force. In the late 1920s he moved to Berlin and worked as a press photographer.

In April 1933, as the Nazis came to power, he arrived in Palestine as a tourist. He later received a permit to stay with help from Moshe Sharett. In 1934 he became a partner and chief photographer at a Tel Aviv press photo company founded by Nachman Shifrin.

His main clients were the Jewish National Fund and Keren Hayesod, which sent him to photograph enterprises and new settlements. In 1937 he took a series of 250 aerial photographs for Zalman Schocken. His photographs appeared in the book Ella Pnei Israel, with text by Moshe Shamir.

In 1958 he and his wife Sarah followed their son Paul to the United States. Kluger opened a photography shop in New York and photographed events, mainly of the Hungarian community. After Sarah died, he married Irma Hegedus in 1965, and he died in Manhattan in 1977.

He left about 50,000 negatives, now held in several public archives in Israel. In 2008 the Eretz Israel Museum in Tel Aviv held his first solo exhibition.