Tim and Sonia Gidal arrived in New York in 1948, having led a nomadic life in exile in a number of different countries. Born Ignaz Gidalewitsch in Munich in 1909, Gidal studied art history, history and literature at the Ludwig-Maxmilians University in Munich while setting out on a career as a photojournalist with Münchner Illustrierte Zeitung, for which the later New York émigré photographers Fritz Henle and Fritz Goro (the husband of Carola Gregor) also worked. He travelled widely in Europe and the Middle East, using images from his trips for his first photobook Jüdische Kinder in Israel, published in 1936. In 1935 he finished his PhD with a thesis on the History and Organisation of the Illustrated Press. The thesis later provided the basis for the photo instruction books he went on to produce. His academic and photojournalistic careers were interrupted with the rise of the National Socialist party in Germany. In 1936 he emigrated to Palestine, where he worked as a journalist, photo reporter and teacher of Middle Eastern art history and history. Tim Gidal was not the only photographer who emigrated to Palestine during the 1930s; among others who did so was Ellen Auerbach. After living from 1938 to 1940 in London, where he was a staff photographer for Picture Post magazine and published a reportage on Victoria Station in 1939. After London, he worked in India, Palestine and Ceylon as a foreign correspondent for some magazines. In 1942 he was drafted into the British Army in the Middle East and from 1945 to 1948 once again lived in Jerusalem, working as a journalist, photographer and lecturer. After continuing his historical studies in Basle and London in 1947 and 1948, he finally emigrated in June 1948 from Southampton to the U.S. and settled in Mount Vernon, New York. He married the photographer Sonia Epstein (born 1922) in 1944 and in 1946 their son Peter was born.

Mount Vernon is an inner suburb of New York City and could be reached from Manhattan via the New Haven line. In the neighbouring city, New Rochelle, lived Kurt Safranski, Ernest Mayer and Kurt Kornfeld, co-founders of the Black Star photo agency in New York and a branch in London. As a renowned photojournalist arriving in New York, it is possible that Tim Gidal was already in contact with Black Star. Few of Gidal's images can be found today in the photographic collection of Black Star at the Ryerson Image Center, which does hold portraits by Anna Freud, the daughter of Sigmund Freud, who taught psychoanalysis in London.

Before her emigration, Sonia Gidal worked as a press photographer in Germany and Israel and, after her arrival in the U.S., she taught arts and crafts at Mount Vernon. Today part of her collected art and cultural objects from her travels are held at the Ethnological Museum in Berlin. Sonia and Tim Gidal began their joint venture in book and photobook publishing in 1951 with the children's book A Children’s Village in Israel. Sonia wrote the text while Tim provided photographs as illustrations. This cooperation resulted in a children's literature series My village in … , which started in 1956 with the exile publishing house Pantheon. The first two books were My village in Austria (Pantheon Books, 1956) and My village in India (Pantheon Books,1956). Between 1956 and 1970 25 volumes were published featuring villages around the world. All books have the same structure. On the front endpapers is drawn a detailed plan of the village where the "hero" of the story lives. Then follows an instructive account of life in that village. The text was written by Sonia Gidal, while Tim Gidal was responsible for the photographs. With their experience of living in several countries in exile, the series can be seen as a reflection of the couple's nomadic life. German editions of the series, titled Mein Dorf in …  were published by the Orell Füssli publishing house in Zurich from 1961, with 10 titles published up to 1968.

Besides his work as a photojournalist and publisher, from 1955 to 1958 Tim Gidal was also a teacher at the adult education New School for Social Research. His scholarly topics represent his personal interest in and knowledge of Middle Eastern history, as well as his experience as a photojournalist and world traveller, and he offered a wide variety of classes, including on communication, art, history, politics, international relations and foreign countries. In the spring 1956 semester he gave two courses, titled “The New Grand Tour” and “Picture Reporting through the Ages”, and in the 1956 autumn semester “The Traveler in Europe” and “World History as Reflected in the Visual Arts”. In the spring 1957 semester he offered “Picture Communication through the Ages” and “Cartoons as Social Force” and in the autumn semester of the same year “History Reported in Pictures”.

Today these courses can be assigned to the field of visual communication following an interdisciplinary approach between history, literature, photography and journalism. The émigrés Kurt Safranski and Alexey Brodovitch had a similar educational and interdisciplinary approach in their courses at the New School during the 1940s and 1950s. Other émigrés giving lessons in photography and offering courses in photojournalism were Lisette Model, Josef Breitenbach, Charles Leirens and Marion Palfi. The émigrés Fred Stein and Werner Wolff also frequented the New School, showing their commissioned work for the Black Star photo agency, and the German émigré Erika Stone was a student there.

In 1970 Tim Gidal returned to Israel, where he taught visual communication at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem. After his divorce from Sonia Gidal in 1970, he married Pia Lis in 1980. A letter he wrote to the émigré photographer Lotte Jacobi describes his life and the photographic projects he was involved in, for example his Juden in Deutschland exhibition, which was presented in several locations in Germany in the 1980s. It is possible that Gidal and Lotte Jacobi, also an emigrant living in New York, might have known each other in Germany before their emigration.