Photograph Album – Photographer Avraham Soskin – Souvenir for Maxa Nordau on the Occasion of Her Visit to Tel Aviv, 1926

Photograph Album – Photographer Avraham Soskin – Souvenir for Maxa Nordau on the Occasion of Her Visit to Tel Aviv, 1926
26 original photographs by Avraham Soskin, mounted in an album, presented as a souvenir to Maxa Nordau, daughter of Max Nordau. Tel-Aviv, 1926.
Twenty-six original photographs taken by photographer Avraham Soskin, documenting the first years of Tel Aviv and the neighborhoods named after Max Nordau – Nordia and Tel Nordau, the reinternment of the remains of Max Nordau and his grave.
A leaf is pasted at the opening of the album with a printed dedication: "With the Compliments of the Township of Tel Aviv, to Miss Maxa Nordau, In Souvenir of Her Visit to Tel-Aviv in May 1926".
The photographs portray: the first meeting of Tel Aviv settlers on the site of Tel Aviv ("The Seashell Lottery", April 11, 1909) - rare photograph; leveling sand dunes; Herzl Street in 1910 and in the years 1924-1925; Rothschild Boulevard (in the years 1910, 1925); Herzlia Gymnasium; Nordia quarter; Tel Nordau neighborhood; the reinternment of the remains of Max Nordau opposite the old city hall building; Menachem Ussishkin delivering a speech in memory of Nordau at "Beit Ha'am"; Nordau's grave; and more. The photographs are accompanied by title-notes (printed in English. Numbered 1-20, 22-27). Unsigned.
Maxa Nordau (1897-1991) – French painter, illustrator and author, the only daughter of Max Nordau (1849-1923) – one of the founders of the Zionist Movement, philosopher, physician and author, born in Hungary. Max Nordau died in 1923, while visiting Paris. In 1926 his remains were buried in Palestine, in the cemetery on Trumpeldor Street in Tel Aviv.
Avraham Soskin (1881-1963) was born in Russia and immigrated to Palestine in 1905. He settled in the German colony in Jaffa and opened the "Photographia Progress" photography studio together with G. Bruck. In 1914 Soskin moved to 24 Herzl St., where the second floor served as both a photography studio and a home for his family and himself; at this studio, called "Photographia A. Soskin", he worked for 19 years, until 1933 (the year the studio was closed). Soskin, known as the "Photographer of Tel Aviv", was among the most important photographers active in Palestine during the Yishuv period. He is unique in the abundance of photographs he took documenting the first two decades of the first Hebrew city; some of Soskin's photos from those years, which became iconic and most identified with the early days of Tel Aviv, are included in this album.
Photographs: approx. 9X16.5 cm - 11X17 cm. Album: 21.5X27 cm, bound with string. Good condition. Minor blemishes to binding.