Jacques Soussana was born 1942 to a multi-culture and art loving family in Larache near Tangier, Morocco. After graduating high school in 1961, he managed the family business, a small art-framing shop. As a second-generation art framer, he was able to use the exterior of a painting and highlight the inner beauty, skill and complexities of the image within. He came to live in Israel in 1966, and a year later, he studied at a prestigious school of photography and cinema before becoming the official photographer of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in 1970. After spending a year at the St. Catherine Monastery in Sinai, where he photographed more than 2000 icons, he married his wife Betty, in 1972.