It is possible that you have seen a photograph by Roman Vishniac and not even realised it. Yet the work for which he is best known, his pre-war photography of Eastern European Jews living in poverty, is a fraction of his output, representing just four years of a career that spanned half a century.
Born in Russia, Vishniac emigrated to Berlin at the start of the 1920s, as the Weimar era flourished. In the German capital, he developed from a hobbyist to a professional photographer as he absorbed the modern styles around him and experimented with new techniques.
His photo, Recalcitrance (on the opposite page), shot from a doorway, is an example of his evolving style — he has found not just a frame for the image, but a way to remain hidden and capture life uninterrupted.
More chilling works came next, in which he photographed his adopted city increasingly bedecked with antisemitic propaganda and Nazi banners. As restrictions tightened on Jewish photographers he used his young daughter Mara as a diversion — if detained, he could say he was taking a photograph of her, not of Nazi propaganda.
In 1935, he began taking commissions from the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) — the body of work for which he is generally remembered. His assignment was to record the poverty of Eastern European Jews to boost fundraising efforts in the West. As antisemitism increased, these images were used in aid appeals for refugees. Finally, after the Holocaust, they became records of “a vanished world” (to name Vishniac’s most famous work).
Commissions in Western Europe offered opportunities to experiment: the bold, modernist images taken at the Werkdorp Nieuwesluis, a hachshara or training centre for young Jews in The Netherlands, reference both the Russian constructivist Aleksandr Rodchenko and the halutz (pioneer) photography from 1930s Palestine.
After a brief internment in the south of France, where Vishniac had been on assignment for the Society for Trades and Agricultural Labour (ORT), he was released and rejoined his family, who had fled to Sweden and were awaiting visas to enter the United States.
On New Year’s Eve 1940, they arrived in New York. Through his lens, he captured not just his own experience of the city, but also that of other refugees adapting to new lives. He realised the importance of these images, and it was recently revealed that he submitted a significant number of them for an (unsuccessful) Guggenheim Fellowship application in 1944, titled The Face of America at War.
Vishniac returned to Berlin after the war, recording the destruction of the city that had been his home. In New York, he continued to accept commissions from Jewish organisations while pursuing his own work, photographing nightclub performers, taking celebrity portraits and chronicling at least one barmitzvah.
He also returned to an early passion: scientific photography for which his cutting-edge work earned him wide renown. In later life he turned to academia, receiving numerous honorary degrees.
Of the 16,000 photographs Vishniac claimed to have taken in Europe, only 2,000 survive, and we are excited to present a selection of more than 200 of these between the Jewish Museum London and The Photographers’ Gallery, along with a selection of ephemera and archive material from his life.
We hope visitors will rediscover familiar photos as well as encounter unexpected images from his career, taking the opportunity to acknowledge Vishniac’s place as one of the great photographers of the 20th century.
Roman Vishniac Rediscovered opens
at the Jewish Museum London on
October 25 and at The Photographers’ Gallery on October 26. Details at
jewishmuseum.org.uk and
thephotographersgallery.org.uk
