The photographer Liselotte Grschebina was born in Karlsruhe, Germany. She and her husband settled in Tel Aviv in 1934. From the 1930s to the 1950s, she took photographs for WIZO, the Palestine Railways, the dairy cooperative Tnuva, kibbutzim, and various businesses. Her work was innovative and startling, portraying subjects through surprising vantage points, strong diagonals, and the play of light and shadow, techniques she had learned in Weimar Germany during the early-twentieth-century revolution in photographic art.
This photograph of a discus thrower refers to the Zionist idea of “muscular Judaism,” in which the “new” Jew would celebrate and cultivate the body, sports, and physical fitness. When Grschebina…
Statesman, merchant, and communal leader Baron Manuel (Isaac Nunes) de Belmonte (d. 1704) was the Spanish agent general in the Netherlands from 1664 and resident (consul) of the King of Spain from…
This ivory openwork inlay from Samaria depicts a figure enthroned on a cushioned chair, perhaps at a banquet, with an attendant standing behind. Royal banquet scenes, common in ancient Near Eastern…