The long and creative life of the photojournalist David Rubinger, who has died aged 92, reflects in many ways the fascinating but frequently turbulent history of Israel, the land he emigrated to as a youth, and which throughout his lifetime he chronicled so meticulously with his camera.

The image with which he is most identified is one he took of three paratroopers at the Western Wall in Jerusalem during the 1967 six-day war. This picture gained him international recognition, even though he was to lose his rights to it.

Arriving at the wall 20 minutes after it was secured by the Israelis, he took several pictures, including one of Rabbi Shlomo Goren being held aloft by soldiers. Rubinger preferred this shot, but it was his wife, Anni, who said that the one of the paratroopers was the best. In his excitement he sent a negative to the government press office, which distributed it widely. Subsequently it was published without his consent by various commercial enterprises. Rubinger took legal action on a number of occasions, but eventually a judge decided that it was a national treasure. Rubinger claimed this was a mixed blessing – while he lost his rights, the picture made his name.

He had joined Time in 1954 as a stringer, and two years later was given his first major assignment when asked to cover Israel’s campaign in the Sinai during the Suez crisis for Life magazine. Rubinger remained with the organisation for more than 60 years, and had the distinction of being its longest-serving photographer.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest David Rubinger made his name with this photograph, taken on 7 June 1967, of Israeli paratroops at the Western Wall in Jerusalem after it was secured during the six-day war. It was declared a national treasure by the Israeli government. Photograph: David Rubinger/Israeli Government Press Office/AP

Despite his leftwing leanings, Rubinger gained the confidence and respect of Israel’s leaders from all parties, and was the only photographer to have a permanent exhibition in the Knesset. One of his earliest assignments was photographing David Ben-Gurion, Israel’s first prime minister, in 1957. He also spent time with Golda Meir, observing her combining the domestic duties of shopping and cooking with her role as foreign minister and later prime minister, in what became known as “Golda’s kitchen”. In 1977 he joined the then prime minister Menachem Begin on the historic visit to President Anwar Sadat of Egypt, then was in Oslo the following year, when Begin and Sadat were awarded the Nobel peace prize.

Rubinger was commissioned in 1994 by Harper Collins to spend a day with the then prime minister, Yitzhak Rabin, for a book, A Day in the Life of Israel, shot by 60 photographers. A year later he would take the last photograph concerning him, of the bloodstained lyrics of Shir Lashalom, or Song of Peace, that Rabin had in his pocket on the night he was assassinated in Tel Aviv.

Facebook Twitter Pinterest The artist Marc Chagall with prime minister Golda Meir at the unveiling of his tapestries in the Knesset in 1969. Photograph: David Rubinger/Corbis via Getty Images

In 1965, the artist Marc Chagall came to Jerusalem to work on tapestries and floor mosaics for the Knesset, and Rubinger was invited to record the visit. He photographed Chagall as he lay stretched out on the ground, sketching designs furiously on paper, and then as he installed 12 stained glass windows in the Hadassah hospital synagogue.

When the first group of 12,000 Russian immigrants arrived in Israel in 1986, Rubinger was at the airport. And when one of the most notable dissidents, Anatoly (later Natan) Sharansky, arrived following a spy swap with the Soviet Union, Rubinger’s camera captured Sharansky and the multitude that gathered to welcome him. He also photographed the arrival of Ethiopian jews following the 1984 airlift, recording the moving stories of their plight.

He took pictures on the sets of films such as Ben Hur (1959), part of which was filmed in Israel, and the TV mini-series, Moses the Lawgiver (1973), starring Burt Lancaster. He also photographed film stars including Jack Lemmon, Peter O’Toole, Harry Belafonte and Lauren Bacall, who was a cousin of Shimon Peres, when they visited the country. In 1983 he had a month’s assignment in Washington at the White House with another actor, Ronald Reagan, then the US president. Every minute detail was decided beforehand. Rubinger said: “All I had to do was to press my finger on the shutter when I was told.”

Born in Vienna, David was the only son of Kalman, a scrap metal dealer, and Anna (nee Kahane). After the Anschluss in 1938, Kalman was detained and sent to Dachau. As he had a relative in London he was able to gain a permit for release and escape to the UK in 1939, while David was selected for emigration to what was then British-ruled Palestine. His mother stayed in Vienna, but three years later was deported to the Maly Trostenets extermination camp, in Belarus, where she was killed.

On arrival in Palestine, Rubinger joined a leftwing kibbutz before serving with the British army in North Africa, Italy and Germany. As a member of the Jewish Brigade he assisted in smuggling displaced Jews out of Europe, including his future wife, Anni Reisler, whom he married in 1946.

Rubinger’s love of the camera began as the result of an earlier liaison. As a soldier stationed in Brussels, he had been given tickets for the opera in Paris. Arriving too late for the performance, he met and fell in love with Claudette Vadrot in a nearby cafe, and it was she who presented him with a parting gift of an Argus 35mm camera when he returned to Palestine, aged 20. This sealed his future as a photographer and, after fighting in Israel’s war of independence in 1948, he joined the Israeli army’s maps and photography services unit.

His first job as a photographer was with a new radical journal, This World, followed by a period with the newspaper Yediot Acharanot, but his breakthrough came with Time in 1954.

Rubinger exercised ruthless determination to do his job. He could be self-critical, but often found ingenious ways of improving his art. He became known as “Abu Salam”, the Father of the Ladder, as he took one with him on many assignments so that he could get a different perspective from other photographers.



Land of blood and honey: David Rubinger's Israel – in pictures Read more

On one occasion he persuaded the Israeli airforce to fly four Phantom jets over Jerusalem so that he could photograph them from above, in another Phantom. On the first sortie he miscalculated the distances but convinced the airforce to repeat the exercise a week later. This time his camera jammed but, resourceful as ever, Rubinger persuaded the pilot to fly round once more as “there was cloud cover last time”.

Rubinger was a self-confessed workaholic. In the early years he often slept on a camp-bed in his office and he was never to be seen without a camera and, later, a phone. For years he would not go on holiday in case he missed an important story. His singular and perceptive way of viewing the world has resulted in an archive of inestimable value for future generations.

Anni died in 2000. Their son, Amnon, and daughter, Tamar, survive him, as do five grandchildren and five great-grandchildren.

• David Rubinger, photojournalist, born 29 June 1924; died 1 March 2017