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Children being comforted after a mortar attack |
Photo-chronicler of Israel
When world-acclaimed photographer David Rubinger found his partner murdered, he decided it was time to record his life story, writes Ruth Gorb
In 2004, the year of David Rubinger’s 80th birthday, his life was ripped apart by violence. He found the body of his partner Ziona dead on the floor with her throat cut – murdered by her gardener in an altercation over money.
The story was in every Israeli newspaper and on every TV channel. For the first time in his life Rubinger, a world-acclaimed photojournalist, found himself on the other side of the lens.
The shock and the media attention had the effect of making him think that he should leave some record of his life. By a strange stroke of fate he met an old friend whom he hadn’t seen for years who agreed with him. Her name was Ruth Corman, and together they have produced a book, Israel Through My Lens: Sixty Years as a Photojournalist.
Rubinger’s life story is the story of the state of Israel. He is, says Shimon Peres in his foreword, the photographer of a nation in the making.
The story starts with a picture of young Jerusalemites climbing on to a British armoured car to celebrate the UN’s decision to establish a Jewish state. One of the last is of Ariel Sharon during his 2001 election campaign with the caption, “I trust Rubinger even though I know he doesn’t vote for me.”
But the story of the man and his camera starts many years earlier. David Rubinger was born in 1924 in Vienna to a traditional Jewish family. In 1939 his father managed to escape the Nazis, but his mother was deported to an extermination camp and died there. David, aged 15, was one of a group of youngsters who were chosen to emigrate to Palestine.
Then in 1942 he decided to join the British Army.
It was just after World War Two that something happened which changed his life. In Paris, he met a girl called Claudette and they had a brief affair. When he was granted leave to return to Palestine – which he now called “home” – she gave him a camera as a farewell present. His love affair with the camera began then and has lasted to this day.
It was the scenes of devastation in Germany that launched him into photojournalism. He traded in 200 cigarettes and a kilo of coffee for a Leica camera and took what he calls his first editorial images.
He now has an archive of half a million images, images of triumph and tragedy, famous people and oppressed people, peace and war. He fought with the unofficial Israeli army, Haganah, and took pictures at the same time, and thereafter was involved in nine more wars – “only shooting with my camera”, he says.
He worked for various Israeli papers and in 1956 he received a commission from the magazine Time-Life. His career took off. He covered the Suez crisis and the Six Day War; he took a picture of Marc Chagall and Golda Meir at the unveiling of the artist’s tapestries at the Knesset – an image that, like so much of his work, shows the humanity behind the news.
A man of great talent and charm, says Ruth Corman, it was a combination that gave him extraordinary access to the great and the good – he was, for instance, in the helicopter with Moshe Dayan and Yitshak Rabin when they were discussing what they should call the Six Day War.
“He was always there,” says Ruth Corman.
Only one major disappointment: he has always been passionate about football, and in 1982 the picture editor of Time-Life asked him to cover the World Cup in Barcelona. It was a dream come true. Then the night before he was due to leave, Ariel Sharon invaded Lebanon. Rubinger had to cover it. “He has never forgiven Sharon for his bad timing,” says Ruth Corman.
He has seen much war and bloodshed, but there has been a lot of glamour, too. He spent a month in the White House, following Ronald Reagan; he photographed Burt Lancaster, Anne Bancroft and Danny Kaye.
But it is perhaps the simple people who are the stars of his collection. There are heartbreaking pictures of children in the aftermath of bombings, of young, frightened soldiers, of a blood-stained piece of paper found in Rabin’s pocket after he was assassinated.
But the question must be asked: what does this compassionate but patriotic man think of the current situation in the Middle East?
Ruth Corman is diplomatic: “David is very left-wing. He thinks that Israel has made a lot of mistakes. But he also recognises the miracle of taking in all these desperate, displaced people and creating a state.”
She first met David Rubinger 20 years ago. She has an art consultancy and gallery in Hampstead, and was so impressed by Rubinger that she brought an exhibition of his work to London as part of the 40th anniversary of the state of Israel. When they met again, only weeks after his partner was murdered, she suggested another exhibition for the 60th anniversary.
“When I went through his collection of images, I saw that he had had such an amazing life there had to be a book about it,” she says. “He agreed, if I would write it for him. He has an amazing memory, and we worked together, on the phone six times a day and by email.
“It had to be written down because his life and his photographs reflect the turbulent history of Israel.
“And there was something else. Here was this man, in his 80s, who had just suffered the most terrible tragedy. Recording his life could give him something to focus on. And it has.
“He said to me, ‘This has been a new lease of life, the best anyone could have. I don’t need anything else.’”
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