An exhibition at the International Center of Photography traces the career and work of Roman Vishniac, a photographer who documented the Jewish communities of Europe for nearly forty years. A few of the images, including one of a curly-haired child lying on a makeshift bed, awaken some memories, but Vishniac remains largely unknown to the general public. In the basement exhibition hall of the ICP, we are reminded of a terrible chapter from our history, but there are also happy moments before and after the war, the faces of men and women, and the smiles of dozens of children, captured by this deeply empathetic man.
Born into a wealthy Russian Jewish family, Vishniac immigrated to Berlin in 1920 following the Russian Revolution. As an amateur photographer with a touch of humor, he photographed the streets of his adopted city in the 1920s and 30s. That was where he tried out the basics of the medium, experimenting with modern approaches to framing and composition. With the rise of Nazism, Vishniac began to document the signs of oppression of the Jewish people, which would soon become the backdrop for a work commissioned in 1935 by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee. Several unreleased images and portraits from the series are included in the exhibition.
In 1941, once again fleeing from war, Vishniac left for New York, where he soon opened his own portrait studio. At the same time, he began documenting Jewish community life in New York, pictures that stood apart from those taken in Europe, where he would return in 1947, driven by the desire to the show the fate of those Jews who were unable to flee. He photographed camps for displaced families, the ruins of Berlin, Holocaust survivors attempting to reconstruct their lives, and the efforts of humanitarian organizations. Thousands of negatives taken during his forays into the Jewish communities of Poland, Lithuania, Latvia, Hungary, Romania and Czechoslovakia, together with correspondence and personal documents, constitute the largest archive of its kind.
Jonas Cuénin
Roman Vishniac, Rediscovered
On view from January 18, 2013 through May 5, 2013
International Center of Photography
1133 Avenue of the Americas at 43rd Street
New York NY 10036
USA
T 212 857 0045
