SOSKIN, Avraham (photographer, 1881-1963) -- DIZENGOFF, Meir (1861-1936). Photograph, taken on the roof-top of an unidentified Tel Aviv building, [c. 1922].

Extremely rare and unusual image of Dizengoff, as mayor of Tel Aviv, meeting members of the Arab community.

123 x 173 mm., mounted on contemporary card (the mount with minor scattered spotting).

Provenance:
Hebrew inscription in pencil on verso.

Relations had been strained between the Yishuv and the Arabs ever since the 1921 riots. However, these early years of the British Mandate were relatively tranquil. Dizengoff himself, in the months after those disturbances said: 'It cannot be denied that a kind of state of war exists between the Jews and our Arab neighbours, but it is, however, a peaceful war, a competition between different ideas and conceptions, between different kinds of energy and manners of life and work' (quoted in Hoffman, pp. 21-2).

Dizengoff looks fairly relaxed, smoking a cigarette. The other members of the meeting are difficult to identify, but standing at the back on the extreme right-hand side is David Smilansky (1875-1953), head of water and electricity in Tel Aviv and one of the founders of the city.

Avraham Soskin was born in Russia and moved to Palestine in 1905. He settled in the German Colony in Jaffa and opened a photography studio by the name of 'Photographia Progress' together with G. Bruck. In 1914 he moved to 24 Herzl Street, Tel Aviv, where he lived on the second floor with his family and which also served him as his studio. Named 'Photographia A. Soskin', this studio was active for 19 years, until 1933. Soskin, known as the 'Tel-Aviv Photographer', was one of the most prominent photographers active in Palestine during the Mandate period, and his outstanding images have come to define the visual history and memory of the first two decades of the first Jewish city.

Please note that this lot is the property of a private collector.