About the artist:

Moï Ver (Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic) was born in 1904 in Vilnius, Lithuania, where he also studied painting. In 1927, visited the Bauhaus in Dessau to take courses with Paul Klee, Wassily Kandinsky, and Joseph Albers, before he left for Paris to study at the Ecole de Photo Ciné. After several unrealised projects for photographic books, necessity led him to begin a career as a reporter. He immigrated to Palestine in 1934, and from 1950 he devoted himself to painting. He died in 1995. Moi Ver: Paris In Paris, his quintessential avant-garde book object published in 1931, Mo- Ver succeeds in blending dynamic photographic montage with an elaborate graphic layout. Utilizing the double-spread as one unified plane, each turn of the page not only surprises, but accentuates the charged rhythm built into the book itself. The bulk of information in these pictures documents mundane street activities in cobblestoned Paris of the late twenties. But the method in which Moi Ver chose to present his material, in its kaleidoscopic layering and frenzied repetitiveness, emphasizes an experimental approach to picture-construction; as if we, the viewers, were walking about bombarded by noise and reflected light. Within each picture, visual data is spliced with pattern, alluding to a lapse of time, as if they were short film vignettes. M. Vorobeichic, who also used the artist name Moi Ver, and whose real name was Moses Vorobeichic (1904), in Israel renamed Moshe Raviv. This painter/photographer is known for his picture-books on the Ghetto of Wilna and Paris (end of the twenties), early examples of the Bauhaus photographic style. (German) From the Preface The Jewish Lane in Light and Shadow by S. Chneour About Paris : 'The book that introduced Moi Ver to the world is exhilaratingly eccentric, definitely avant-garde.... Moi Ver's Paris is a city in motion, hurtling almost out of control. Cobblestone streets, bustling crowds, facades, railway tracks, bridges. the glittering river, and countless monuments shift and shatter here.... Moi Ver's version of Paris was eclipsed two years later by the publication of Brassai's more conventionally seductive Paris de Nuit, but no one has yet matched Moi Ver's vision of the brutal, chaotic, irresistible modern city.'-Vince Aletti, from the Book of 101 Books In Paris, his quintessential avant-garde book, Moï Ver succeeded in blending dynamic photographic montage with elaborate graphic layouts. Utilizing the double-spread as one unified place, each turn of the page not only surprised but accentuated the charged rhythm built into the book itself. The bulk of information in these pictures documents mundane street activities in the cobblestone-covered Paris of the late 20s. But the method in which Moi Ver chose to present his material, in its kaliedoscopic layering and frenzied repetitiveness, emphasized an experiential approach to picture construction-as if we, the viewers, were walking about, bombarded by noise and reflected light. Originally published in 1931 by Editions Jeanne Walter with an introduction by Futurist Fernand Leger, now long out of print and exceptionally rare, this facsimile reproduction of Paris brings back into circulation one of the seminal photographic books of the century. "My grandfather on my mother’s side was a photographer and artist named Moshé Raviv-Vorobeichic (who also worked under the pen name Moï Ver). He lived from 1904 to 1995. Born and raised in Vilna, now Vilnius in Lithuania, Moshé lived and worked in Paris before moving to Tel Aviv and eventually settling in Safed in northern Israel. In the late 1920s he studied at the famous Bauhaus school in Dessau, Germany, where his instructors included Paul Klée and Vassily Kandinsky. Moshe produced many paintings, especially in the later part of his career. As a young man, however, he was recognized primarily as a photographer, employing many innovative and creative techniques. Two major books of his photography were published. The first, “The Ghetto Lane in Vilna” (published in 1931) documented the everyday life of the city’s Jewish residents. In the same year, his second book, titled “Paris” was published by Jeanne Walter, with an introduction by Fernand Leger (it was republished in 2004 as “Ci-Contre - 110 Photos by Moï Ver,” by Ann and Jürgen Wilde, with commentary by Inka Graeve Ingelmann and Hannes Böhringer). An exhibition of these photographs was held in the Pinakothek der Moderne in Munich in the winter of 2004/05." taken from flickr.