Roman Vishniac (; ; August 19, 1897 – January 22, 1990) was a Russian-American photographer, best known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central Europe and Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. A major archive of his work was housed at the International Center of Photography until 2018, when Vishniac's daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, donated it to The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley. David Clary (2024). Walter Kohn: From Kindertransport and Internment to DFT and the Nobel Prize. World Scientific Publishing.
Vishniac was a versatile photographer, an accomplished biologist, an art collector and teacher of art history. He also made significant scientific contributions to Micrograph and time-lapse photography. Vishniac was very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors, and strongly attached to his Jewish roots; he was a Zionism later in life.ICP Library of Photographers. Roman Vishniac. Grossman Publishers, New York. 1974.
Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photos of and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits, and microscopic biology. His book A Vanished World, published in 1983, made him famous and is one of the most detailed pictorial documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe in the 1930s. Vishniac was also remembered for his humanism and respect for life, sentiments that can be seen in all aspects of his work.
In 2013, Vishniac's daughter Mara (Vishniac) Kohn donated to the International Center of Photography the images and accompanying documents comprising ICP's "Roman Vishniac Rediscovered" traveling exhibition.
In October 2018, Kohn donated the Vishniac archive of an estimated 30,000 items, including photo negatives, prints, documents and other memorabilia that had been housed at ICP to The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, a unit of the University of California at Berkeley's library system.
As a child, Vishniac was fascinated by biology and photography, and his room was filled with "plants, insects, fish and small animals".Vishniac, Roman. The Concerns of Roman Vishhniac: Man, Nature and Science. On his seventh birthday, he got a microscope from his grandmother, to which he promptly hooked up a camera, and by which he photographed the muscles in a cockroach's leg at 150 times magnification. Young Vishniac used this microscope extensively, viewing and photographing everything he could find, from dead insects to animal scales, to pollen and protozoa.
Until the age of ten, Vishniac was Homeschooling; from ten to seventeen, he attended a private school at which he earned a gold medal for scholarship."Roman Vishniac". Current Biography (1967). Beginning in 1914, he spent six years at the Shanyavsky Moscow City People's University (now Russian State University for the Humanities) in Moscow. At the institute he studied zoology. As a graduate student, he worked with prestigious biologist Nikolai Koltzoff, experimenting with inducing metamorphosis in axolotl, a species of aquatic salamander. While his experiments were a success, Vishniac was not able to publish a paper detailing his findings due to the chaos in Russia and his results were eventually independently duplicated. In spite of this, he went on to take a three-year course in medicine.
In 1935, as anti-Semitism was growing in Germany, Vishniac was commissioned by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) in Central Europe to photograph Jewish communities in Eastern Europe as part of a fund-raising drive to help support these poor communities.[3] Voices on Antisemitism Interview with Maya Benton from the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Vishniac developed and printed these pictures in his darkroom in his Berlin apartment. Further trips to Eastern Europe were undertaken between 1935 and 1938, again at the behest of the JDC. Vishniac used both a Leica Camera and a Rolleiflex camera in his photography. In 1939, his wife and children moved to Sweden to stay with Luta's parents, away from hostile Germany. He met his parents in Nice that summer.
Vishniac traveled to Paris in late summer 1940, and was arrested by Marshal Pétain's police and interned at Camp du Ruchard, a deportation in Indre-et-Loire. This occurred because Latvia, of which he was a citizen, had been subsumed into the Soviet Union and Vishniac was considered a "stateless person". After three months, as a result of his wife's efforts and aid from the JDC, he obtained a visa that allowed him to escape via Lisbon to the U.S. with his family. His father stayed behind and spent the war hidden in France; his mother died from cancer in 1941 while still in Nice.Jewish Museum Berlin (2005). Special Exhibition: Roman Vishniac's Berlin . Accessed February 14, 2012
In 1946, Vishniac divorced Luta, and the next year he married Edith Ernst, an old family friend. A few years later, he gave up portraiture and went on to do freelance work in the field of Micrograph.
Once in the United States, Vishniac tried desperately to earn sympathy for impoverished Jews in Eastern Europe. When his work was exhibited at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1943,"Studies in Misery Shown". New York Times February 2, 1943; ProQuest Historical Newspapers pg. 21. he wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt (First Lady at the time), asking her to visit the exhibit, but she did not. He also sent some of his photographs to the President, for which he was politely thanked.Edited by Kohn, Mara Vishniac and Flacks, Miriam Hartman. Roman Vishniac: Children of a Vanished World. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999.
Of the 16,000 photographs taken in Eastern Europe by Vishniac, only 2,000 reached America.UCSB Arts & Lectures (2000). Work of photographer Roman Vishniac remembered in special illustrated program at UCSB. Accessed October 18, 2005. Most of these negatives were carefully hidden by Vishniac and his family; others were smuggled in by Vishniac's good friend Walter Bierer through Cuba. In the photographer's own words,
During his life, Vishniac was the subject and creator of many films and documentaries; the most celebrated of which was the Living Biology series. This consisted of seven films on cell biology; organs and Organ system; embryology; evolution; genetics; ecology; botany; the animal world; and the microorganism world. It was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation.
Vishniac received Honorary Doctoral degrees from the Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia College of Art and the California College of Art,Ciano, Bob. The Vanished World: A limited edition portfolio. Roslyn Heights, NY: Witkin-Berley, 1977. before his death from colon cancer on January 22, 1990.
While touring Europe, Vishniac posed as a traveling fabric salesman, seeking aid where he could and bribing anyone who got in his way.Murray, Schumach. "Vishniac's Lost World Of the Jews". New York Times November 25, 1983; ProQuest Historical Newspapers The New York Times (1851–2002) pg. C1. During his touring of Eastern Europe (1935–1939), he was often arrested by police for taking these pictures, sometimes because he was thought to be spying. Later, when published, these photographs made him popular enough for his work to be showcased as one-man shows at Columbia University, the Jewish Museum in New York, the International Center of Photography and other such institutions.
Vishniac claimed that he had taken 16,000 photos in this period, every one a candid shot, but the veracity of these claims has been challenged by research by Maya Benton, a curator at the International Center of Photography.Roman Vishniac. Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record. New York: Schocken, 1976. To photograph small villages in these mountains, Vishniac claimed he carried heavy equipment (Leica, Rolleiflex, movie camera, tripods), 115 pounds (52 kilograms) by his estimate, on his back, up steep roads, trekking many miles. Vishniac captured thousands of impoverished Jews on film, "... to preserve — in pictures, at least — a world that might soon cease to exist".
When using a Leica for indoor shots, Vishniac sometimes brought a kerosene lamp (visible in some of his work) if there was insufficient light, keeping his back to a wall for support, and holding his breath. The Rolleiflex was used mostly for outdoor scenes.
Roman Vishniac did not just want to preserve the memories of the Jews; he actively fought to increase awareness in the West of the worsening situation in Eastern Europe. "Through his photographs, he sought to alert the rest of the world to the horrors of", Mitgang. In late 1938, for example, he sneaked into Zbaszyn, an internment camp in Nazi Germany near the border, where Jews awaited deportation to Poland. After photographing the "filthy barracks", as he described it, for two days,Levin, Eric. "A fateful photo from the Holocaust leads photographer and subject to an emotional reunion in the Bronx" People Weekly, April 23, 1984 v21 p74(2). Retrieved January 3, 2006, from InfoTrac Web InfoTrac OneFile A3233313. he escaped by jumping from the second floor at night and creeping away, avoiding broken glass and barbed wire. These photos were sent to the League of Nations in Geneva to prove the existence such camps.
After Vishniac's death, many photos came to light depicting life in Berlin taken between 1920 and 1939. Some of these negatives were found at the end of rolls of film devoted to scientific work. An exhibition of Vishniac's Berlin photos was mounted at the Jewish Museum, Berlin in 2005, and a book of the photos was published.
These pictures, all in black and white, were done with available light or sometimes a lantern, yet they are "amazingly crisp with surprising depth of field".Herbert Keppler. "A vanished world". Modern Photography, Sept 1984 v48 p92(1). Accessed January 3, 2006, from InfoTrac Web: OneFile A3409487 Indeed, "There is a grainy realism to Vishniac's photographic style. We can almost finger the coarse textures of coats and shawls; the layers of fabric worn by the people seem more related to tree bark than to the well-pressed wool suit worn by an occasional elegant passerby." Vishniac is known to have exaggerated in composing the captions of his photographs, and in some cases he may have fabricated the stories behind them.
Vishniac's photographs have had a profound effect on Holocaust literature and have illustrated many books about the Jewish ghettos and Holocaust. In the case of The Only Flowers of her Youth, the drama of the photograph inspired Miriam Nerlove to write a novel based on the story of the girl in the picture.
For this work, Roman Vishniac has received the Memorial Award of the American Society of Magazine Photographers in 1956. A Vanished World has won the National Jewish Book Award in the visual arts category in 1984; The Only Flowers of her Youth was deemed "most impressive" at the International Photographic Exhibition in Lucerne in 1952; and the Grand Prize for Art in Photography, New York Coliseum.
In 1955 Edward Steichen selected three of Vishniac's Eastern European photographs; of boys at a Cheder in Slonim (1938), of children and a woman in Lublin (1937), for the Museum of Modern Art world-touring The Family of Man exhibition that was seen by 9 million visitors, accompanied by a catalogue which has never been out of print.
When photographic curator Maya Benton began to catalog Vishniac's negatives for the archive of the International Center of Photography, she noticed that, in his book A Vanished World, Vishniac juxtaposed photos to tell stories, and wrote captions that were not supported by the material. In the final spread of the book, for example, there is a photo of a man peering through a metal door; on the opposite page a small boy points with his finger to his eye. Vishiniac's caption reads: "The father is hiding from the Endecy (members of the National Democratic Party). His son signals him that they are approaching. Warsaw, 1935–1938." At the front of the book, additional commentary reads: "The pogromshchiki" (pogrom lynch mob) "are coming. But the iron door was no protection." Benton's research found that the photos were from different rolls of film, taken in different towns, so the scene described in the book "almost certainly did not happen".
Similarly, Benton discovered negatives that showed the unsmiling little girl depicted in The Only Flowers of her Youth – whom Vishniac had claimed did not own a pair of shoes – smiling and wearing shoes.
Michael di Capua, who edited Vishniac's text for A Vanished World, has said that he felt disquiet while compiling the text, since so much information was unsubstantiated. Benton also suggested that the terms of Vishniac's commission from the JDC – to photograph "not the fullness of Eastern European Jewish life but its most needy, vulnerable corners for a fund-raising project" – had led to his overemphasizing poor, religious communities in A Vanished World.
One of Roman Vishniac's most famous endeavors in the field of photomicroscopy was his revolutionary photographs from the inside of a firefly's eye, behind 4,600 tiny ommatidia, complexly arranged. In addition, there were the images taken at the medical school of Boston University of the circulating blood inside a hamster's cheek pouch. Vishniac invented new methods for light-interruption photography and color photomicroscopy. His method of colorization, (developed in the 1960s and early 1970s) uses polarized light to penetrate certain formations of Cell complex and may greatly improve the detail of an image.
In the field of biology, Vishniac specialized in marine microbiology, the physiology of , circulatory systems in unicellular plants and endocrinology (from his work in Berlin) and metamorphosis. Despite his aptitude and accomplishments in the field, most of his work in biology was secondary to his photography: Vishniac studied the anatomy of an organism primarily to better photograph it. Besides experimenting with the metamorphosis of axolotl, he also researched the morphology of in 1920: both in Berlin. As a biologist and philosopher in 1950, he hypothesized polyphyletic origin, a theory that life arose from multiple, independent biochemistry reactions, spawning multicellular life. As a philosopher, he "developed principles of rationalistic philosophy" in the '50s.
Vishniac's subjects varied throughout his life. At times, he would focus on documenting everyday life, as in Berlin, and later portraiture, doing famous portraits of Albert Einstein and Marc Chagall. He was also a pioneer in time-lapse, on which he worked from 1915 to 1918, and again later in life.
Vishniac associated much of his work with religion, though not specifically Judaism. "Nature, God, or whatever you want to call the creator of the Universe comes through the microscope clearly and strongly," he remarked in his laboratory one day.
Living with the memory of hardship, Vishniac was, "an absolute optimism filled with tragedy. His humanism is not just for Jews, but for every living thing." He probably believed in God or some similar concept, but he was non-denominational and did not adhere strictly to the principles of any religion. He even clashed with Orthodox Judaism in one well-known instance: The religious Jews he met on his trek around Europe would not let themselves be photographed, quoting the Bible and its prohibition of making of idolatry. Vishniac's famous response was, "the Torah existed for thousands of years before the camera had been invented."
Vishniac was known for having great respect for all living creatures. Whenever possible, he returned a specimen to its location at the time of capture. and one time "lent his bathtub to for weeks until he could return them to their pond". In accordance with this philosophy, he photographed almost exclusively living subjects.
Biography
Early life
Berlin
New York
Later life
Photography
In Central and Eastern Europe
1935–1939
Style
Impact
Criticism
Photomicroscopy and biology
Other photography
Religion and philosophy
Publications
1947 Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record Polish Jews showcased 31 images of the life and character of these people "stressing the spiritual side of the subjects' lives and ... it did not include any of the pictures Roman took to emphasize the economic struggle in which the Jews were engaged."; Essay by Abraham Joshua Heschel. 1947 * Die Farshvundene Velt: Idishe shtet, Idishe mentshn.
*The Vanished World: Jewish Cities, Jewish People Edited by Raphael Abramovitch; title, text and captions in English and Yiddish; includes photographs by R. Vishniac, A. Kacyzna, M. Kipnis and others. First edition of the earliest and most comprehensive graphic pictorial history of Jewish life at the beginning of the Nazi era. McGill University Digital Collections Program. Di farshvundene velt. Accessed February 25, 2006.Farber's Rarities (2003). A Vanished World. Accessed February 25, 2006. 1955 Spider, Egg and Microcosm: Three Men and Three Worlds of Science Published by Eugene Kinkead; The three men were Petrunkevitch, Romanoff and Vishniac 1956 This Living Earth (Nature Program) Published by N. Doubleday 1957 Mushrooms (Nature Program) Prepared with the cooperation of the National Audubon Society; Published by N. Doubleday 1959 Living Earth Drawings by Louise Katz; Subject: Soil biology Library of Congress Online Catalogue. Control #79000366 1969 A Day of Pleasure: Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw Written by Isaac Bashevis Singer Find in a Library with WorldCat (2006). A day of pleasure; stories of a boy growing up in Warsaw.. Accessed February 25, 2006. 1971 Building Blocks of Life: Proteins, Vitamins, and Hormones Seen Through the Microscope Published by Charles Scribner's Sons 1972 The Concerned Photographer 2 Grossman Publishers; Edited by Cornell Capa, text by Michael Edelson; In cooperation with ICP 1974 Roman Vishniac of the ICP Library of Photographers 1983 A Vanished World Foreword by Elie Wiesel; this version is significantly different from the original version of 1947, being completely redone and with many fewer photographs. This is probably the best-known collection of Vishniac's and has independently contributed most to his popularity. Roman Vishniac. A Vanished World. Farrar, Straus and Giroux. September 1983. 1985 Roman Vishniac by Darilyn Rowan, published at Arizona State University School of Art. 1993 To Give them Light: The Legacy of Roman Vishniac Biographical note by Mara Vishniac Kohn, edited by Marion Wiesel 1993 Roman Vishniac: The Platinum Prints of the International Center of Photography International Center of Photography (2010). Past Exhibition . Accessed February 15, 2010. 1999 Children of a Vanished World Edited by Mara Vishniac Kohn and Hartman Flacks 2005 Roman Vishniac's Berlin Edited by James Howard Fraser, Mara Vishniac Kohn and Aubrey Pomerance for Jewish Museum Berlin Jewish Museum Berlin. Publications: Roman Vishniac's Berlin. Accessed March 9, 2006. 2015 Roman Vishniac Rediscovered Edited by Maya Benton for International Center of Photography International Center of Photography. . Accessed November 23, 2015.
Major exhibitions
1943 Teacher's College, Columbia University, New York City One-man show of photographs of impoverished Eastern European Jews 1962 IBM Gallery, New York One-man show; "Through the Looking Glass" 1971 The Jewish Museum, New York "The Concerns of Roman Vishniac"; The first comprehensive showing of Vishniac's work, produced by ICP 1972–1973 Art Gallery of the University at Albany, The State University of New York; The Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C.; New Jersey Public Library, Fair Lawn; Kol Ami Museum, Los Angeles; Judaica Museum, Phoenix "The Concerns of Roman Vishniac" circulated around the US by ICP. This exhibit was probably a continuation of the last one at the Jewish Museum; however, it is listed as a separate production in Roman Vishniac 1993 International Center of Photography, New York City "Man, Nature, and Science, 1930–1985" 2001 Spertus Museum, Chicago 50 of Vishniac's photographs from Roman Vishniac Children of a Vanished World; Mara Vishniac Kohn guest speaker 2005–2007 Jewish Museum Berlin, Goethe-Institut, New York Title: "Roman Vishniac's Berlin"; exhibiting 90 images in Berlin, some never before seen by the public.
Goethe-Institut Los Angeles. Roman Vishniac’s Berlin. Accessed August 16, 2008. 2013–2016 International Center of Photography, New York City, Museum of Art Fort Lauderdale, Jewish Historical Museum, Amsterdam, Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme, Paris, Museum of the History of Polish Jews, Warsaw, Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, Contemporary Jewish Museum, San Francisco Title: "Roman Vishniac Rediscovered"; Retrospective exhibition of Vishniac's entire body of work including previously unseen work. 2020–present The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, University of California, Berkeley An Archive of Archives: Roman Vishniac’s Exhibition History >New York, 1971-72"
See also
Organizations
Photography
People
Further reading
External links
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