Food photographers from Tel Aviv eat up
Their photography has been showcased in 17 books and they’ve worked with some of the world’s top chefs. Meet Shimon Rothstein and Tamar Shavit, culinary photographers with some real talent. (Photo by John Hritz)
Check out this story from Haaretz.com
Shimon Rothstein and Tamar Shavit, who moved to the United States in 1999, have photographed 17 books, including those of leading chefs like Marcus Samuelson, Jean Louis Palladin and David Burke, and the Daniel Boulud catalogue.
“We do not try to stage the photos,” says Rothstein, noting that their photos capture imperfections like brown spots on an apple and a ladle with a few drops of soup on it.
Their photography has definitely turned some heads, and it’s something that they are both completely committed to.
Rothstein, 43, began his photography career at age 9. The son of an ultra-Orthodox Hasidic family in Bnei Brak, his hobby was very unusual for his surroundings. He studied at a yeshiva until age 14, when he stopped being religious.“I was a paparazzo child,” he recalls. “My subjects were the Hasidic grand rabbis.”
Rothstein served in the Golani brigade in the Israel Defense Forces, and spent five years backpacking around the world after his discharge. Shavit, 40, his wife, grew up in Givatayim, studied painting at the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem; photography at Wizo France high school in Tel Aviv; acting at Beit Zvi School of Stage Arts in Tel Aviv; and performed at the Library and Simta Theaters. They met one day in the early 1990s, at the Income Tax Commission offices in Ramat Gan. She needed a pen; he helped her fill out the forms, and they have been together ever since.
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