Vardi Kahana

Vardi Kahana (Hebrew: ורדי כהנא; born 1959) is an Israeli photographer.

Biography Kahana was born in Tel Aviv in 1959. She grew up in a religious family and attended Zeitlin school. She studied art in HaMidrasha – Faculty of the Arts, Beit Berl College, but did not graduate.

At the beginning of the 1980s, Kahana began her career in photography reporting for Monitin magazine, and within a short period of time settled into magazine photography. As part of her job she has photographed a variety of Israeli figures.

In 1983, she joined Hadashot newspaper, working there until 1993 when the newspaper closed. In 1995, she began working for 7 days newspaper, which is held by Yedioth Ahronoth.

Exhibitions In recent years, she has exhibited her works at many solo shows around the world, including The Public Library in Amsterdam, Fotomuseum Antwerp, Jewish Museum of Belgium, Pecci Museum, Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Academy of Arts, Berlin, Jewish Museum Munich, Haifa Museum of Art, Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco. Major retrospectives of her work have been shown in The Art Gallery at Yad Labanim Ramat HaSharon and "The Artists House" in Rehovot.

Solo exhibitions

1992 'Photography : Vardi Kahana', Camera Obscura Gallery, Tel Aviv, Israel 2001 'Beauty Has Cut Itself Of', Ramat Gan Museum, Israel 2007 'Israeli portrait', Artist's House, Tel Aviv Israel 2007 'One Family', Andrea Meislin Gallery NY NY 2007 'One Family', Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Tel Aviv, Israel 2008 'One Family', Pecci Museum, Prato, Italy. 2008 'A Photographer of people', Academy of Design and Photography, Haifa, Israel 2008 'One Family', Academie der Kunste, Berlin, Germany 2008 'One Family', Photo Museum, Antwerp, Belgium 2008 'One Family', The Jewish Museum, Brussels, Belgium 2009 'One Family', Arts Depot, London, England 2010 'One Family', The Public Library, Amsterdam, Holland 2010 'One Family', Sinti and Roma Museum, Heidelberg, Germany 2010 'One Family', The Bundestag, Berlin, Germany 2012 'Near and Far', The Artists House, Rehovot, Israel 2013 'Fields of Vision', The Art Gallery at Yad Labanim, Ramat Hasharon, Israel 2015 'One Family', The Center for Jewish Life, Princeton University 2023 "Zakhor/Remember", Museum of the Ara Pacis.

Works Her most famous photograph, from 10 February 1983, depicts a demonstration of the Peace Now movement in Jerusalem, on which Emil Grunzweig appears a few minutes before his assassination.

Kahana's works are in the collection of the Israel Museum, Jerusalem.

Kahana was a curator of Local Testimony – a Middle East regional exhibition of photojournalism for several years.

Books

Awards 2011. Sokolov Award for outstanding achievements in journalism. Kahana is the first photographer receiving this award.