IN PHOTOS: Israel's leaders as you've not seen them before
For 35 years, Dan Hadani's photos agency documented hundreds of moments in Israel's history. A collection of these photos, now open to the public at the National Library, reveals what life in Israel was like in the second half of the 20th century.
The collection of media photographs from the Israel Press & Photo Agency (IPPA) serves as another angle into Israeli history, society and culture during the second half of the 20th century.
Dan Hadani, a resident of Givatayim, is a Holocaust survivor who made aliyah to Israel and served in the IDF Spokesman's Unit, where he was first exposed to the world of mass media.
He founded the IPPA in 1965 and it remained active until 2000. Hadani used to work with mostly amateur photographers, and the collection contains photographs from some 200 different photographers.
Throughout the agency's 35 years, it collected photographs sent from photographers from all across the country. These photos document Israel from the days before the Six-Day War and until the second intifada: Wars, peace accords, settlements, terror attacks, protests, political upsets, cultural events and more.
Alongside those, there are also photos depicting day-to-day life, which allow for a glimpse into Israeli society and culture as it was during the second and third generations since the establishment of the state.
The collection's importance lies mostly in the fact Hadani worked primarily with foreign agencies. Unlike Israeli photographers and media, whose angle of photography and coverage was news-based and often cynical, the photographs in the collection feature a different look at the nation, as seen from the eyes of foreigners.
