I saw that my camera gave me a sense of connection with others that I never had before. It allowed me to enter lives, satisfying a curiosity that was always there but that was never explored before.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
I realized all of the possibilities that could exist for me with my camera: all of the images that I could capture, all of the lives I could enter, all of the people I could meet and how much I could learn from them.
I've learned survival secrets from being on camera, and then translated them into everyday life.
Just having the camera, being able to pull back from situations and be an observer, it saved my life... I realised I could find these intimate moments and that people trusted me. That, basically, my camera was magic.
I knew from the first moment I picked up a camera, on my first school assignment, what I wanted to do for the rest of my life. I was going to find a way to travel the world and tell the stories of the people I met through photographs.
Looking into the camera creates a special eye and soul contact.
Before the camera, you only had secondhand takes - someone had to tell you what they saw or draw a picture of it or sing a song. Because of the camera, sometimes to our horror, we now know everything that happens in the world - things that before we were sheltered from.
At some point during my travels, I had a slight change of focus which would end up defining the rest of my career. I began taking pictures of people. In addition to all the buildings, street signs and fire hydrants, I started photographing some of the interesting humans that passed by me on the street.
After my grandmother passed away, I felt the urge to take my camera to her flat. I knew this flat from my childhood in Tel Aviv. Going to this flat was like going abroad; there was a real feeling of traveling across Tel Aviv and ending up in Berlin.
I wanted to communicate what I had seen, so that others could see it.
Being a shy person, I always felt strange outside with my camera.