At 101, an Israeli photojournalist and Holocaust survivor still sees history through the lens

Dan Hadani, a 101-year-old Israeli photojournalist and Holocaust survivor, documented Israel's formative decades after immigrating alone in 1948. He survived Auschwitz, where he faced Dr. Josef Mengele, and served 15 years in the Israeli Navy before founding the Israel Press Photo Agency (IPPA) in 1964. Hadani's agency operated until 2000, capturing defining moments in Israeli history and supplying photographs to 25 international newspapers. He emphasized the importance of captions, stating, "They always say a picture is worth a thousand words, but it isn’t worth anything if there are no words attached to it." In his 90s, he digitized 400,000 negatives and donated his life's work, totaling over a million negatives and tens of thousands of slides, to the National Library of Israel. The Library will hold a special ceremony in August to unveil the Dan Hadani Collection. Despite the trauma of the Holocaust and the recent October 7th attacks, Hadani remains active, working on a book, and asserts, "There is no ‘I am tired’ for me."