ters during this time was a young picture editor for
Weekly Illustratednamed Stefan Lorant, who hired
the neophyte photographer for assignments in
Munich and London.In the early 1930s, Gidal tra-
veled extensively in Germany, France, Holland,
Poland, and Scandinavia before emigrating to
Basel, Switzerland in 1933 to complete his doctoral
dissertation ‘‘Pictorial Reporting and the Press.’’
Tim Gidal’s role as a practitioner, scholar, and
historian of photography set him apart from his
contemporaries. A humanist in the truest sense of
the word, his contributions to the medium’s mod-
ern history include the publication of more than
30 books, the organization of nearly two dozen
major exhibitions, and the tutelage of several gen-
erations of students in the United States and
Israel. Throughout a career that spanned the bet-
ter part of the twentieth century, Gidal imparted
his genuine compassion for his subject matter and
his profound belief in the significance of the pho-
tographer’s role as an historical eyewitness. Whe-
ther documenting a mundane interaction between
pedestrians on a street in Tel Aviv or photograph-
ing Gandhi’s address to the All-India Congress,
Gidal maintained an unwavering faith in the dig-
nity of his sometimes ordinary, sometimes extra-
ordinary subjects. Though he professed a healthy
respect for photographers who attempted to
‘‘express their inner self with the help of the
photographic lens,’’ Gidal felt it best to ‘‘leave it
to the object/subject to express itself with the assis-
tance of [his] camera’’ (My Waypreface by Nissan
Perez).His images invariably evoke an emotional
response, despite Gidal’s consistent and exacting
professional distance. In Gidal’s view, only through
the ‘‘subjective experiences of the objective facts,’’
could a ‘‘genuine’’ photo-reporter ‘‘become a wit-
ness to his own time.’’ Although he photographed
sensational events, Gidal avoided sensationalism by
refusing to photograph violent scenes and by
emphasizing the ordinary in the extraordinary and
vice versa.
In many early photographs, like ‘‘And Yet it
Moves,’’ taken in 1929, it is clear that Gidal experi-
mented with the extreme camera angles and subjec-
tive manipulations popular with the photographers
trained under La ́szlo ́Moholy-Nagy at the Bauhaus.
Other pictures, such as his 1935 photograph of
mannequins in a milliner’s shop window, resemble
the proto-surrealist photographs of Euge`ne Atget,
who captured the spirit of turn-of-the-century
Paris by photographing the defining urban spaces
of Parisian life rather than the inhabitants them-
selves. Still other photos, like an untitled 1930
image depicting a disheveled young couple exchan-
ging a passionate kiss, recall the voyeuristic night-
club photography of contemporaries like Brassaı ̈.
There are tightly cropped crowd pictures resembling
the work of Weegee and urban snowstorm photos a`
la Alfred Stieglitz or Edward Steichen. In the end,
however, Gidal eschewed both subjective avant-
garde techniques and the much-lauded ‘‘decisive
moment’’ approach promoted by modern photo-
journalists like Henri Cartier-Bresson in favor of
more objective, unmediated images that convey the
expressive personality of his subjects as well as his
own intimate understanding of those subjects.
Following the completion of his doctorate in 1935,
Gidal produced and directed three short documen-
tary films in Palestine under the titleEretz Israel
which were screened throughout Germany, France,
and Italy in 1936. After the publication of his book
Children in Eretz Israelthat year, Gidal permanently
relocated to Eretz, working as a freelance foreign
correspondent for Reuters-Photos and as a photo-
grapher for the Jewish National Fund and the
Hebrew University Hadassah Medical Center. In
1938, he became the first photojournalist to publish
a color photo-essay whenMarie-Claireprinted his
seriesHoly Land.Gidal traveled to London for the
launch of Lorant’sPicture Postthen embarked for
India and Ceylon where he produced some of his
most famous Life magazine and Picture Post
photo-essaysThe All India Congress,Travels with
Ghandi, Village in India,andBuddha Procession in
Ceylon. Upon his return to Palestine in 1940, Gidal
providedphoto-essays of campaigns in North Africa,
Burma, and China for the Middle East Eighth Army
magazineParade. In 1943, Gidal was wounded on
Samos Island in the Aegean Sea and was subse-
quently assigned to Southeastern Asia under the
command of General Mountbatten.
Following his marriage to Sonia Epstein in 1944
and the birth of his son Peter two years later, the
Gidal family joined leagues of Nazi-persecuted Ger-
man Jewish intellectuals and artists when they
embarked for New York City. In 1948, Gidal
assumed a position on the editorial staff atLife
magazine while teaching classes in the History of
Visual Communication at the New School for
Social Research. Over the next two decades, Gidal
published more than two dozen books, including
This is Israel(1948) and a series of 23 children’s
books co-written by his wife Sonia that depicted
children in different cities and villages around the
world. Though he continued to photograph, his
work as a curator, professor, and author took pre-
cedence from the mid-1950s on. His most influen-
tial text was a history of photojournalism published
in Germany in 1958, translated asModern Photo-GIDAL, N. TIM