Ido Biran was born in Tel Aviv in 1980. He moved to Herzliya as a child and came back to Tel Aviv after his military service. He has lived in Tel Aviv ever since, with the exception of a few years in the States studying architecture. “So this city isn’t a subject I discovered,” says Ido Biran. “It’s home. I live in the Old North, but my favorite part of the city is the area around Nahalat Binyamin Street and the Levinsky Market.”

Ido Biran skilfully combines his passion for photography with his love for Tel Aviv through his business, “Photo Tel Aviv,” started in 2014 under the name “Tel-Avivi.” “At first I made postcards and magnets from my photos and sold them through local art and souvenir shops around the city. Then I started showing at art fairs, first on Dizengoff Street, then at the Greek Market in Jaffa, and eventually at the Nahalat Binyamin Arts and Crafts Fair, where I still exhibit,” said Ido Biran.

“Selling face to face has taught me more about my work than anything else, because you see right away which images move people,” Ido continued. That grew into my website, phototelaviv.com and then into my books. Lately I’ve been focusing on larger pieces for homes and offices, for people who want Tel Aviv on their walls as art they live with, not just a souvenir. My dream is to open my own gallery, either on my own or together with a few other local artists.”

Interestingly, Ido Biran is admittedly completely self-taught. “I think that has shaped how I work,” he said. “Nobody ever taught me rules about what a “good” photograph is. I learned by shooting, printing, and watching how people reacted at my stall at the Nahalat Binyamin fair. Some of my best teachers were strangers who stopped and told me, “That’s my street,” or “My grandmother lived in that building.”

Ido came to photography as he says “sideways.” “During my army service, I worked as a video editor in a film unit, and that’s where I first started seeing the world in frames. Later I studied film at Tel Aviv University and then architecture at UCLA. Both sharpened that way of looking: how light falls on a building, how a person moves through a space, where a story begins and ends inside a rectangle. At some point I realized I was walking around Tel Aviv composing pictures in my head, so I picked up a camera to keep them.”

And Ido has never chased competitions or awards for his work. Ido explains that his “jury” has been the thousands of people who have stopped at my stand at Nahalat Binyamin over the years. Beyond that, I’ve taken part in several exhibitions and curated a few as well.”

What Ido Biran wishes to communicate through his photography are the layers of Tel Aviv, the city that he loves. Ido said “Tel Aviv isn’t just a beach city or a nightlife city. It has layers: Bauhaus buildings, old Jaffa, small details people walk past every day. I want people, Israelis and visitors alike, to look at one of my photos and feel they’re seeing their city for the first time.”

“I rarely go out looking for a specific shot. I walk, often through the same places at different hours, until the light, a person, or a moment makes the picture happen. My architecture background draws me to lines, facades, and the way buildings meet the sky. But what makes a photo work for me is usually something human or unexpected within that structure. Why Tel Aviv? Because it changes so fast. Buildings go up and come down, and whole neighborhoods transform within a few years. I see part of my work as documentation: holding on to what the city looks like now, before it becomes something else.”

Biran is the author of two books. His first book is entitled “Tel Aviv City Portrait 1909” and came out in 2019, funded through a crowdfunding campaign. “Tel Aviv City Portrait 1909” has since sold out.

About “Tel Aviv City Portrait 1909,” Biran said,”When I published my first book, “Tel Aviv City Portrait 1909″ in 2019, I had spent several years wandering around Tel Aviv with my camera, looking for everyday urban moments. I wanted the book to carry that feeling of wandering, so I built it around nine walking routes through different neighborhoods and along the coastline of Tel Aviv-Jaffa. The book has 190 photographs across 9 chapters. Put the two numbers side by side and you get 1909 the year Tel Aviv was founded.”

The idea for Biran’s new book “Tel Aviv Beaches (Hofei Tel Aviv) came from his father. Biran loved the idea and kept the same concept of that of his first book. “This time though,” Ido Biran says, “instead of nine routes I made a single one that runs the whole length of Tel Aviv’s promenade and shoreline. It starts at Givat Aliya Beach in Jaffa, on the border with Bat Yam and ends at Tzuk Beach in north Tel Aviv, on the border with Herzliya. I wanted readers to feel like they’re at the beach even when they’re not physically there.”

“The beaches are the city’s living room, the place where everyone meets: religious and secular, families, surfers, old men playing matkot, tourists. The book is bilingual, Hebrew and English, with 101 original photographs across 192 pages. Its 13 chapters cover the coastline from Givat Aliya Beach in Jaffa to the Tzuk beaches in the north, each with texts and maps. It was designed by Liron Levin, the texts were written by Dan Ronen, and it’s self-published. The whole process, from editing the photos to printing, took a year and a half. We launched it on October 26 at the Bauhaus Center on Dizengoff Street.”

Liron Levin, is a young, talented designer who completed her design studies not long ago. One of Liron’s teachers was the designer of Biran’s first book and that is how Biran came to find Liron to be the designer for his second book. Liron designed both “Tel Aviv Beaches” and the maps for each of the 13 beaches.

“Dan Ronen, who penned the text for the “Tel Aviv Beaches’ project, is a talented writer and a good friend,” says Ido Biran. “We studied together in the film department at Tel Aviv University and have remained close ever since. His texts add some interesting info. and go great with the photographs.”