Micha Bar-Am, who has been a Magnum Correspondent since 1968, was born in Berlin and moved with his family to Israel - then Palestine - in 1936.
Growing up in Haifa, Bar-Am lived on a kibbutz and began to document kibbutz life with borrowed cameras. Active in the pre-state underground, Bar-Am was drafted in 1948 when the jewish-arab conflict turned into an all-out war. After his military service, he had several jobs before he began to photograph seriously, covering the 1956 Sinai War.
After the publication of his first book, Across Sinai, Bar-Am was asked to join the editorial staff of the Israeli Army magazine "Bamachane", where he worked as a photographer and writer for the next eight years. In 1959 and 1960 he was awarded the Robert Capa Award. He began freelancing in 1966, and covered the Six-Day War in 1967.
In the mid-1960s, Bar-Am curated several exhibits and books with Cornell Capa, including Israel: The Reality. He assisted Capa with the establishment of the International Center for Photography in 1974, and became an active curator. From 1977 to 1993, he was curator of photography at the Tel Aviv Museum. His reportages on Israel have been published in a large number of magazines and books.