It’s been said a picture is worth a thousand words. While Israeli photojournalist Gil Cohen-Magen never actually uttered those words during an interview last week with The Chronicle, it’s a good bet he believes them.
“I think that every picture that you shoot documents history and tells a story,” he explained.
Through his camera lens he has captured the most violent scenes of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, to the closed world of ultra-Orthodox Hassidim to photos of Prime Minister Ariel Sharon.
Cohen-Magen’s photos have been published in newspapers and magazines all over the world. He worked for Reuters news agency for more than 10 years and still freelances for the company, has worked for Yediot Achronot (ynetnews on the Internet) and Haaretz in Israel. His photos have been displayed in Europe and Israel and he has toured the United States four times since the beginning of 2012. This trip, his first to Kansas City, includes visits to seven other cities.
Born in 1971, Cohen-Magen is based in Modiin, Israel. After serving in the Israeli army, where he was a paratrooper and also snapped some photos, he chose to study photography for three years at Hadassah College of Jerusalem and continued his studies in Montreal. It was photos he took in 2000 of the second Intifada he took that caught the eyes of international news agencies and magazines.
Not long after that Reuters offered Cohen-Magen a job based in Jerusalem. He noted that it was the first time Reuters hired Israeli photographers to follow the conflict.
He’s shot a lot of wars and rarely thinks about the risks he’s taking at the time because he’s focused on getting good photos.
Only when things are quiet and he’s editing the photos on the computer does he realize the danger he was in.
Does he do anything special to catch that good photo? He admits capturing that special photo is sometimes simply luck.
“If you go to Syria and you snap a lot of pictures, I think you will find a very strong picture,” he explained. “That doesn’t mean I’m a great photographer.”
“Often the photo comes to me. I will not come to the picture,” he continued.
Being a former soldier has helped him take interesting war photos.
“You cannot use the flash and need to act and think like a soldier … (you can’t do) things to get in the way or cause attention to you or the troops … It’s easy for me. I know all the rules,” he said.
Across the world, the face of Israel is often war and conflict. So Reuters asked Cohen-Magen to capture more of everyday life in Jerusalem.
“Reuters also wanted to see a different side of Israel and wanted to see more than blood and funerals,” he said.
He chose to focus on the ultra-Orthodox. Very little had been photographed of that culture because “they are against cameras and photography is against the rule of the Torah.”
Originally Cohen-Magen shot photos from the street — documenting such things as preparation for Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot and Chanukah. But he really wanted to shoot inside the community.
“It’s very, very difficult. It’s impossible to shoot the pictures,” he said.
So he sought people to help him, eventually finding a group of teenagers who lived in Mea Shearim. After explaining that he wanted to show the “color” and “positive life” of the area and showing them photos he had already taken, they decided to trust him.
They asked him to keep their identities secret and in turn they would give him tips on where to take photos. They snuck him into places and he often hid his camera under his jacket, never using a flash during the entire project. After a while he chose to dress like the Hassidim, wearing a black kipah, black and white clothes and “even a small beard.”
He spent a decade taking these photos, putting them in his book “Hassidic Courts,” published in 2011 by Ayin Publishing House.
It was during this project that he took one of his favorite photographs, which has since been chosen as one of the top 100 photographs of the decade. Taken in 2005, it depicts an Orthodox Jew trying to push a bulldozer.
It tells the story of an Orthodox community opposing construction of a new road. They opposed it because in order for the road to be built, graves would have to be moved. Moving graves, regardless of whether they belong to Jews or others, is strictly forbidden by Jewish law.
“One of the guys arrived and decided to try to push the bulldozer,” out of the way,” Cohen-Magen explained.
“Reuters chose it as one of the 100 best pictures of the decade, saying it shows David against Goliath and shows the face of Israel.”
A good photojournalist doesn’t become one without chutzpah and Cohen-Magen has that as well. In 2005, prior to Israel’s disengagement from the Gaza Strip and four settlements in the northern West Bank, there were fears that Ariel Sharon would be hurt or assassinated. Reuters wanted Cohen-Magen to spend as much time as possible with the prime minister. That wasn’t an easy task.
After failing to get access to Sharon through proper channels, Cohen-Magen wrote Sharon a personal letter. Sharon then invited the photographer to come to his home.
Cohen-Magen took Sharon a gift of photos he had taken and gave him a note telling him he appreciated the job he was doing.
“I explained that I wanted to take different pictures of him,” he said. “I didn’t want only boring photos of him shaking hands.”
Sharon was impressed Cohen-Magen worked for Reuters and served as a paratrooper in the army, so he allowed the photographer to follow him. He covered Sharon about five months, going everywhere with him.
Ironically one of the photos Cohen-Magen likes the best of Sharon is where he was attempting to shake hands. In it, Bobby Brown is keeping the prime minister from touching singer Whitney Houston.
“Bobby Brown snuck in the middle and told the prime minister he was sorry but Houston would not shake his hand. When Sharon asked why, Brown told him that she was not shaking hands with men and that she was keeping distance between men and women,” Cohen-Magen said.