Vitrine: A Display Window of Tel-Aviv

“Vitrine: A Display Window of Tel-Aviv 1924-1964”, is an homage to Tel-Aviv in its formative years. As the grandson of the owners of the umbrella and fashion accessory store ‘Gewurtz’, known to anyone that lived in the city during the aforementioned years, I chose to create a book which displays and explores Tel-Aviv during the defined period. This is done by strolling through its streets, A look at the storefronts of the businesses, In the cafes, cinemas and cultural institutions of the city that grew from the sands of the sea and aspired to resemble European cities, wishing to be Tel Aviv on the Danube. The concept dictated the choice of the album format, the collection, selection, processing and pagination of the photographs, as well as the typographical choices. In order to enrich the project with a modern touch, the symbol that’s stamped on the cover of the book is an abstraction of the lighthouse painted on the symbol of the city of Tel-Aviv designed by the painter and writer Nahum Gutman in 1925. The audiovisual display completes the experience of revising Tel Aviv during the early-to-mid twentieth century through a slide show containing atmospheric photographs of the city and photographs of notable Tel-Avivians. The slide presentation is accompanied by a series of interwoven excerpts from songs, in hebrew and various langugaes from the period, that emphasize the cosmopolitan atmosphere that the builders of the city wanted to create.