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Menachem Kuchar
Biography Menachem was born in Australia where he completed his formal education. When he was eight years old, his uncle gave him an old Kodak box camera. He took many pictures over a number of years with this simple device and also dabbled with developing and contact printing. It was only many years later though that Menachem started to do serious photographic work. He set up a darkroom with friends in Australia and continued to produce diverse photographic work in both black & white and colour until moving to Israel in 1983. Without a darkroom, Menachem's photographic output dropped and displays of his work were limited to the walls of his home. Menachem strongly believes that the camera is only a part of producing the photograph, work in the darkroom constituting a major part the creative process. With the latest advances in photography, Menachem has switched to digital cameras and to the digital darkroom. He says the new technology has allowed him to turn the clock back over twenty years, to again produce fine art photography and to further his creative development. During 2005 Menachem held two one-man shows. The first of these, entitled "Eating Out in Thailand", was in March at the Little Gallery near the Efrat library. The second, entitled "Actualities in Black and Orange", was in the summer at the Gush Katif Hotel and featured the first photographs in this collection. In January 2006, Menachem's first book, based on the Actualities collection, was released. The launch of the book coincided with a one-man show of more than 60 photographs at the Judaica Centre in Gush Etzion. In 2009 a part Menachem's Actualities collection was featured at the Polish Museum of Ethnography in Warsaw as part of an exhibition entitled Orange Revolutions. Menachem says that he is self-taught . . . with a little help from his friends. He is married to Jillian. Together with their six children, they have lived in Efrat for twenty-five years.
Menachem currently uses a Canon 5D Mark II camera producing about 21 megapixel photographs. Many of the photographs on this site were taken with a Canon 5D (nearly 13 megapixels)and a 10D (6.3 megapixels). Menachem also has a Canon point and shoot. (There was a FujiFilm E900, until Aviel dropped it nearly three floors at the Summit of Victoria Peak in Hong Kong.) |