Biography

Born in Berlin on August 26,1930, as Michael Anguli; his father was the manager of a department store in Ulm; in 1936 the family emigrated to Palestine, he grew up in Haifa and on a kibbutz. He was an active member of the anti-British underground; his code name, Bar-Am, stayed. In the 1950s he co-founded a kibbutz, worked as a welder and locksmith before starting to make a living with photography. Received the Robert Capa Award in 1959 and 1960, and worked freelance from the mid-sixties onwards. In 1961 he married Orna, with whom he has three sons.
He has been a correspondent for Magnum since 1968, remaining the agency’s only Israeli member. In 1974 he helped establish the ICP in NYC; from 1977 to 1993, curator for photography at the Tel Aviv Museum of Art. Bar-Am lives in Ramat Gan, Tel Aviv.