In 2000, Eldad Cidor and I were invited to a meeting with editorial staff of the Maariv newspaper. Eldad worked with me first as my assistant, and later became my partner at the Shouker-Cidor Studio. At the meeting at Maariv we were told that the paper had decided to publish a weekly entertainment guide for the city of Tel Aviv and was looking for a new concept for its front page. It was customary at that time for the front page layout to consist of a large image of a celebrity with text alongside it, which provided information about the articles inside. Eldad and I suggested a novel idea: Every week we would produce a staged image, which at first glance would seem to be a snapshot, and which would relate to life in the city from our personal perspective.
Both the artistic concept and the conditions we set were unusual:
* We would have total artistic freedom
* We would crop the photographs as we saw fit, in conjunction with the graphic designer
* There would be no text on the cover
We agreed on a trial period of nine issues. Following publication of the nine issues, despite the positive feedback received, Maariv decided to use photographs of celebrities combined with text referring to the content inside. Eldad and I chose to move on.
Several months later, as the result of our work at Maariv, we were approached by Status – the Magazine for Business and Management Thinking, whose editor-in-chief was Yaron London. Along with the acting editor, Ran Ziv, we developed a concept for a new section of the magazine, "Life after Work," which was a dialogue between a poem edited by Ronny Someck and a photograph that we supplied. It was a kind of artistic interlude among the pages of the professional magazine.
During the same period I came up with an idea for a conference that would explore the relationship between art and business, and their connection to the issue of social responsibility. The conference was organized by Status and the Alma (Business for Art) organization. The central topic discussed, moderated by London, was: "The Business Firm and its Support for the Arts – Investment or Philanthropy? The Position of the Establishment and Taxation Policy." Alongside the conference, Eldad and I presented the artwork which we had created for the two magazines, as a photography exhibit of extra-large dimensions. Several of the works were later exhibited at galleries and museums in Israel and abroad.
