Author Yoram Kaniuk, a friend of Carmi's, perhaps expressed the inner meaning of his work most succinctly. "Boris Carmi, the Russian who went to school in Germany and spoke German, became an Israeli before Israel itself came into existence. His grasp of Hebrew was not outstanding, but his photography is as Hebrew as it is possible to be. It has the rigid yet beautiful Hebrew grammar, which lacks any "true" form of present tense, for the present tense of photography lies in its...
more »Author Yoram Kaniuk, a friend of Carmi's, perhaps expressed the inner meaning of his work most succinctly. "Boris Carmi, the Russian who went to school in Germany and spoke German, became an Israeli before Israel itself came into existence. His grasp of Hebrew was not outstanding, but his photography is as Hebrew as it is possible to be. It has the rigid yet beautiful Hebrew grammar, which lacks any "true" form of present tense, for the present tense of photography lies in its meaning. For Boris at least, photography had no past and no future. (excerpted from Yoram Kaniuk, Israeli author, in Boris Carmi, Photographs from Israel, ed. Alexandra Nocke, Prestel Publishers, Munich, 2004).
Shlomo Shva, another friend and also a historian, wrote on the occasion of an exhibition at the Rubin Museum in Tel-Aviv, ..."What he recorded with his camera in the course of 50 years will always be testimony to what is impossible to relate in words."
Boris Carmi must surely be defined as Israel's humanist photographer par excellence. His work is permeated by an enquiring eye and a love of life, together with a documentation that parallels the development of the new State. Born in Russia he arrived in Palestine in 1939, later volunteering for the British Army. In 1946, after WW II, he worked for the Hagana (pre-State army) in the mapping department. He worked for almost thirty years for the newspaper Dvar, covering all aspects of Israeli society. His work has been seen in many exhibitions and is preserved in a number of publications.
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