Micha Bar-Am Portfolio, Magnum photographer,vintage wrk Start Price USD 1,795.00 Current Price USD 1,795.00 Time Left - Bid Count 0 Buy It Now Price - Reserve Price - Start Time Wednesday, July 02, 2008 End Time Wednesday, July 09, 2008 Location New York, NY See more about 'Micha Bar-Am Portfolio, Magnum photographer,vintage wrk' Description Micha Bar-Am Portfolio, Magnum photographer,vintage wrk (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) (Click to Enlarge) Description Micha Bar-Am, 2005 You are bidding on a vintage portfolio (circa 1980's) by the photographer Micha Bar-Am. Micha is 88 years old this year and this set of ten 16x20 inch silver gellatin prints represents a lifetime of work. As a founding member of both ICP and Magnum, Micha is well known at home and abroad...and we believe his photos speak for themselves. These prints are beautifully done on Bravura paper (discontinued) and made available in a clam shell cloth case bearing his name on the front. These limited edition portfolios can never be reprinted due to discontinued paper. In the Winter of 2007, a lifetime retrospective of Micha's work is opening in Paris. This is a rare chance to get this vintage work before the price skyrockets then. The retail of this set was $5000, with "street price" being about $3500. We are offering this set far below that cost with no reserve. We will let the market take care of itself. Micha Bar Am is an outstanding art photographer and, at the same time, perhaps the best practicing photo reporter we have in Israel today. It is in this capacity that he has gone on missions and created exhibitions for Beth Hatefutsoth which rank among the finest this museum ever displayed. Micha Bar Am has all the talent, experience, power of observation and intelligence it needs to make an excellent photo reporter. But his real strength lies in his ability to lift photo documentary exhibition, created by Bar-Am's hyper -- sensitive camera, always becomes an unusual esthetic experience. The artisitic value they carry, makes all his documentary exhibitions worth showing in art museums and photo art galleries, irrespective of their varying documentary content. Jesaja Weinberger Director of Beth Hatefutsoth The Nahum Goldman Museum of the Jewish Diaspora (From an address delivered at the opening of the exhibition " 'La Nacion' -- The Spanish and Portuguese Jews in the Caribbean", April 9th, 1981.) Presenting The Images: F I R S T . S O L D I E R . A T . T H E W A L L, . S I X . D A Y . W A R, 1967. T H E Y . A R R I V E D from all directions as soon as the heard we had captured the Wall. A hosanna of jubilation filled the air, punctuated by shots as bid paratroopers advanced ever deeper into the old city. Hands reached out to touch the ancient stones. Singing, singing, feels of the Shofar, prayers and the joyous wails of those who had no words. One of the first soldiers to reach the wall caught my eye by revered shoe of his utter quietness and the natural way the bullets around his shoulders transformed themselves into a prayer shawl. I never saw his face and for this I am grateful, before he remains to me a pure symbol of that historic moment. D A V I D . B E N . G U R I O N, K I B B U T Z . S D E . B O K E R, 1971. L I K E . M A N Y . A N O T H E R .visionary, during the twilight of his life, Ben Gurion spent his last years in seclusion in the desert. He lived in a Kibbutz and contemplated the future. Every day he took a walk in the early morning or late afternoon, sometimes in conversation with an accompanying friend but just as often alone with his vision-still unrealized-of a flourishing Negev. Today this road is an avenue in an olive grove and Ben Gurion is buried nearby. B E R E A V E D . F A T H E R, G O L A N . H E I G H T S, 1967. O N E . BY . ONE . the parents were called up to receive the decorations during the memorial service in a hall on the very battlefield where their sons fell. Only muted sobbing could be heard. Their attempts to put on a brave face were as transparent as the naive, improvised decor-that symbolized their loss I tried to remain inconspicuous for I recognized many of the parents and knew that they knew I had been with the unit. Soon would come the inevitable questions: did I, perhaps, happen to have a photograph of their son? Did I manage to record his last living hours? F U N E R A L . A T . Y E R K A, 1968. I N . A . VILLAGE.in the Galilee, thousands came to bury a young Druse soldier. When the funeral was over, the old men sat for a long time at the edge of the cemetery. Fatalistically, drawing on primal power, these priests of a secret religion held time still with their virile silence and their acceptance of death. What where they thinking? Who could know? A L L E Y . I N . J E R U S A L E M, 1972. E V E R Y . Y E A R . A T. Easter thousands of Pilgrims flock to the holy sites in the old City of Jerusalem, and the streets fill with the complement, these two old Greeks so intent on their conversation that they seemed neither to notice me nor to care about the presence of my camera. But when, in the viewfinder, I discovered the two women descending the steps and one of them had the grace to unfold her wings, then I knew I had my picture. Y O M . K I P P U R . E V E, M E A . S H E A R I M , 1972. I N . M E A . S H E A R I M.in Jerusalem, everyone is always in a rush. Have you ever seen an Orthodox Jew who is not in a hurry? How much more so on the shortest day of the year, the eve of Yom Kippur, the Day of Atonement. It was five o'clock in the morning, and this old man had already gone to fetch his chicken to be sure he would fulfill the ancient rite of caparot. The chicken did not break the silence of the street, as if accepting that it was being delivered to its fate. T O R A H . S C R I B E, J A F F A, 1971. I . O N C E . D I D a series of photographs on Torah scribes, such as the pious Yemenite in this picture. Their work is surrounded by ritual for their spirits must be as sharp as their feather quills in order to faultlessly ink the ancient calligraphy of the holy scrolls. Nothing less than perfection is acceptable. The day before I had photographed a scribe, who came originally from Poland. The work of these two men was virtually interchangeable, though their training took place in continents and cultures that where miles apart. Amazed and in silent wonder, I saw before me the unabated power of a tradition that lives and even looks today just as it did two thousand years ago. C R O S S I N G . T H E . S U E Z . C A N A L, Y O M . K I P P U R . W A R, 1973. T H E . W A R . W H I C H began when the Egyptians in a surprise attack crossed the canal into Sinai, started to turn around as the Israelis finally managed to drive a bridgehead back over the canal and carry the fighting to Egyptian soil. In the still gloomy atmosphere, General Arik Sharon's aggressive optimism had not only to inspire his soldiers but also to overcome skeptical strategies. Moshe Dayan, then minister of defense, flew in. Like him, I climbed on Sharon's armored vehicle to watch the attack in progress. The battle was not yet over, but the war was decided. A R T I L L E R Y . B A R R A G E, S U E Z . C A N A L, Y O M . K I P P U R . W A R, 1973. T H E . I S R A L I . H A D . B E E N crossing into Egypt for several hours when we where discovered by the Egyptian artillery. We where talking to the prisoners we had already taken when suddenly shells started to fall around us. The barrage did not distinguish between capture and captive as we huddled together. I kept photographing, instinctively, trusting to what a friend once told me that in situations like these, composition takes care of itself. F A T H E R . N E O P H I T U S, . S A N T A. K A T A R I N A M O N A S T E R Y, . S I N A I, 1967. I T . W A S . T H R E E or four AM, I'd spent the night helping father Neophitus bake bread. In the morning it would be given to the neighboring Bedouins in fulfillment of a bargain struck centuries ago, whereby austere monks provided bread in return for a guarantee of their safety. When we finished, he invited me to his austere cell for a glass of ouzo. He rolled himself a cigarette and leaned exhausted upon his hand. " Hold it," I said and took this picture by the dim light of the kerosene lamp. He looked timelessly biblical, like one of the prophets or maybe even Moses himself. Who knows what brought him to this desert? Micha Bar-Am was born in Berlin in 1930 and immigrated with his parents to Palestine when he was six years old. He was active in the pre-State underground and later served in a Palmach (Elite Infantry Corps) Unit during Israel's 1948 War of Independence. It was during this war that Bar-Am witnessed a series of events that altered the face of his homeland. In 1949, he helped to found Kibbutz Malkiya on the Lebanese border and later worked as a locksmith, mounted guard, and youth instructor at the Kibbutz Gesher-Haziv in Western Galilee. Never merely a detached witness of his country's history, people, and landscapes, Bar-Am began to photograph seriously in the early fifties, although his interest in photography started as a teenager. Using borrowed cameras until he bought himself a vintage Leica, Bar-Am recorded in a small notebook the exposure times and lighting conditions of every photograph he took. Slowly his work began to be published. In 1957, he became a photographer-reporter for the Israeli Army magazine Ba-Mahaneh and was on its editorial staff for ten years. He has photographed the Israeli Army ever since, covering the Six-Day War in 1967 with Cornell Capa, recording the war in 1973 at the Suez Canal and documenting the Israeli invasion of Lebanon. He served as a photographic correspondent for the New York Times in Israel from 1968 to 1992. Bar-Am has called Israel his "lifetime assignment" and his pictures are visual statements about the fascinating complexity of Israeli life. Rooted in photojournalism but shaped by an artist's eye, his work belongs to the tradition of such photographers as Robert Capa, Walker Evans and W. Eugene Smith. Many are images of daily life during wartime, which do not depict direct combat as much as they do the traces of conflict. These include a crowd of people looking for names on the surface of a Holocaust Memorial wall and a fashion show held on an army base for the entertainment of a crowd of soldiers. The works in the exhibition are not so much about the nation's history as it is about the traces of history in everything from daily life to echoes of Bar-Am's own struggle, the rewards and frustrations of attempting the improbable task of observing and participating in the events as they are taking place. Since assisting Cornell Capa in 1968 to create the landmark exhibition Israel the Reality at The Jewish Museum in New York City, Bar-Am has been heavily involved in the work of other photographers as a historian, and since 1977, as curator and founding director of the Department of Photographs at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, a position he held until 1993. He has since returned to his own photography. See also, letters from friends and associates Certificate of Authenticity The publisher certifies that the following information concerning this suite is true and correct. Each of the ten original photographs was produced as herein described. The ten gelatin silver prints were made from original negatives created by Mr. Micha Bar-Am. Each piece has been hand developed, dodged and burned by or under the personal direction of Micha Bar-Am. This edition was printed using museum archival standards as its guide. The paper and cheMichals used in the process were chosen by Mr. Bar-Am. Mr. Bar-Am has chosen Agfa Brovura double weight paper #119 and Dektol developer by Eastman Kodak. Since each photograph is hand printed and is considered an individual work of art, there will be some variation from print to print. Upon completion of this series, the ten original photographic negatives shall be retired and donated to the permanent archives of the Tel-Aviv Museum, Tel-Aviv, Israel. Payment and Shipping Info Buyer pays shipping and handling. Overnight and other express shipping is available upon request. Please contact ebay@photovillage.com for prices, or call 1.212.989.1252. Shipping fees are never refundable under any circumstances. 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