Abraham Menashe is a photographer, poet, lay theologian, and plant whisperer. The author of 14 photography books, he remains deeply committed to creating images that affirm life, provide refuge, and offer consolation.
His landmark publications include Inner Grace (Knopf, 1979), a poignant study of America’s multi-handicapped population. The work won the 1980 One to One Media Award, opened alongside an exhibition at the Witkin Gallery, and was featured on CBS’s Sunday Morning. His subsequent book, The Face of Prayer (Knopf, 1980), captured global expressions of faith. Supported by Fellowship in Prayer’s first annual Carl Ellison Evans Award, it was published in tandem with an exhibition at the International Center of Photography in New York and was also highlighted on CBS’s Sunday Morning by Charles Kuralt.
Menashe’s photographs are held in the permanent archives of numerous prominent institutions, including New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of the City of New York, the New York Historical Society, the Jewish Museum, and the Kosciuszko Foundation. His commissioned work includes a permanent installation at the Church Center of the United Nations in New York.
Born in 1951 in Heliopolis, Egypt, Menashe emigrated in 1961 when his widowed mother moved with her three children to Princeton, New Jersey. A self-taught photographer, Menashe later settled in New York, where he married storyteller and translator Dvorah Friedgood (m. 1974–div. 1988), with whom he has a daughter, the artist Rebecca Menashe.
When the digital marketplace began reshaping traditional print sales, Menashe naturally embraced his second calling: poetry. Today, he lives and writes in New York, finding quiet solace watching ferries glide across Manhattan’s East River, while continuing his passions as an avid aquarist and plant lover.
