ABOUT THE COLLECTION

The "Meitar Collection" is a private archive which preserves and catalogues photographs in order to present and place them at the disposal of museums, publications and producers.

The archive was established by Zvi Meitar, who began to collect photographs prompted by his interest in the history of the Land of Israel.

The photograph collection includes more than 150,000 negatives photographed in the Land of Israel prior to and after the establishment of the State, by photographers working in Israel, among them Boris Carmi, Beno Rothenberg, and Moshe Levine.

The expression: "A picture is worth a thousand words" constitutes a highly appropriate reflection of our approach.

We believe that the presentation of the pictures on our website and making them accessible to the public will contribute to building knowledge and historical memory of the nation and of this place.

In addition, the collection houses over 750 documents and manuscripts, spanning some 500 years, the most ancient dating back to 1501. To a considerable extent these     papers can be taken as a reflection of history, albeit in a broader context than is actually shown in the photographs.  The collection of manuscripts incorporates documents and letters from the heads of the Zionist Movement and icons of Hebrew culture, such as Herzl, Dreyfuss, Jabotinsky, Ben Gurion, Arlozorov, Weizmann, Dizengoff, Leah Goldberg, Bialik, Tchernikovsky. The collection furthermore includes documents signed by great leaders and world statesmen such as Napoleon, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great, Louis XIV, Cromwell, Richelieu, Bismarck, Elizabeth I, Mary Queen of Scots, Philip II, Winston Churchill, the Duke of Wellington, Queen Victoria, Lord Allenby, and Lawrence of Arabia.

The two parts of the collection, accumulated over a 40 year period, constitute a fascinating historic mosaic and offer a fertile canvas for study and research.

The "Meitar Collection" Company also publishes catalogues, the principal edition of which is "The 60-Confrontation Controversy that Provoked the Press". 

As of 2019, the Meitar Collection is collaborating with the National Library in Jerusalem, for a cataloging and accessibility project of the collection. Link to the full collection on the National Library website: https://www.nli.org.il/he/discover/photos/collections/meitar-collection#more