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Roman Vishniac

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   Roman Vishniac, 1977photo by Andrew A. Skolnick
   Enlarge
   Roman Vishniac, 1977
   photo by Andrew A. Skolnick
   Roman and Edith Vishniac, 1977 photo by Andrew A. Skolnick
   Enlarge
   Roman and Edith Vishniac, 1977
   photo by Andrew A. Skolnick

   Roman Vishniac ['vɪʃniæk] (Russian: Роман Вишняк; August 19, 1897 –
   January 22, 1990) was a renowned Russian-American photographer, best
   known for capturing on film the culture of Jews in Central and Eastern
   Europe before the Holocaust.

   Vishniac was an extremely diverse photographer, an accomplished
   biologist and a knowledgeable collector and teacher of art history.
   Throughout his life, he made significant scientific contributions to
   the fields of photomicroscopy and time-lapse photography. Vishniac was
   very interested in history, especially that of his ancestors. In turn,
   he was strongly tied to his Jewish roots and was a Zionist later in
   life.

   Roman Vishniac won international acclaim for his photography: his
   pictures from the shtetlach and Jewish ghettos, celebrity portraits,
   and images of microscopic biology. He is known for his book A Vanished
   World, published in 1983, which was one of the first such pictorial
   documentations of Jewish culture in Eastern Europe from that period and
   also for his extreme humanism, respect and awe for life, sentiments
   that can be seen in all aspects of his work.

Biography

Early life

   Roman was born in his grandparent's dacha outside of Saint Petersburg,
   in the town of Pavlovsk, and grew up in Moscow. To live in this city
   was a right granted to few Jews but Roman could live there because his
   father, Solomon Vishniac, was a wealthy manufacturer of umbrellas, and
   his mother, Manya, was the daughter of affluent diamond dealers (Roman
   also had a sister, Katja). During the summer months; however, the
   Vishniacs would leave: Moscow often became uncomfortably hot and the
   family would retreat to a dacha a few miles outside of that city.

   As a child, Roman Vishniac was fascinated by biology and photography,
   and his room was filled with "plants, insects, fish and small animals".
   On his seventh birthday, Roman 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 homeschooled; from ten to seventeen,
   he attended a private school at which he earned a gold medal for
   scholarship. Beginning in 1914, he spent six years at Shanyavsky
   Institute (now University) in Moscow. While enrolled there, he served
   in the Tsarist, Kerensky and Soviet armies. At the Institute, he earned
   a Ph.D. in zoology and became an assistant professor of biology. 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,
   Dr. 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.

Berlin

   In 1918, Roman Vishniac's immediate family moved to Berlin because of
   anti-Semitism spurred by the Third Russian Revolution. Roman followed
   them and, shortly after arriving, married Luta (Leah) Bagg, who gave
   birth to two children, Mara and Wolf. Roman Vishniac supported his own
   budding family (and sometimes his parents as well) by working at
   various jobs. In his free time, he studied Far Eastern Art at the
   University of Berlin. Vishniac researched endocrinology, optics, and
   did some photography (see right). In Berlin, he also initiated his
   public speaking career by joining the Salamander Club, at which he
   often gave lectures on naturalism.

   In the 1930s, as anti-Semitism was growing in Germany, Vishniac took
   his famed trips to Eastern Europe, photographing the culture of poor
   Jews in mountainous villages and urban ghettos. For approximately 4
   years, (the exact period is debated), he would travel back and forth
   from Berlin to remote locations, taking thousands of pictures and
   living with whomever would take him in, at the same time supporting his
   family in Berlin. In 1939, Roman's wife and children moved to Sweden to
   stay with Luta's parents, away from hostile Germany. He met up with his
   parents in Nice that summer.

   Roman Vishniac returned to Paris in late summer 1940, and was arrested
   by the Pétain police and interned at Camp du Ruchard, a deportation
   camp in Clichy, France. This occurred because Latvia, where he had had
   his citizenship, had been subsumed into the Soviet Union and Vishniac
   was considered a "stateless person". After 3 months, as a result of his
   wife's efforts and aid from the American Joint Distribution Committee,
   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.

New York

   The Vishniac family fled from Lisbon to New York City in 1940, arriving
   on New Year's Eve. Vishniac tried for days to get a job but failed:
   "For me, it was a time of distraction and fear." Vishniac struggled. He
   was multilingual, speaking at least German, Russian and Yiddish, but he
   could speak no English yet and thus had a difficult time. He managed to
   do some portraiture work with mostly foreign clients; but business was
   poor. It was during this time, in 1942, that Roman took one of his most
   celebrated portraits, that of Albert Einstein. Vishniac arrived at
   Einstein's home in Princeton, New Jersey, getting into the scientist's
   study with the ruse of bringing regards from mutual friends in Europe,
   and photographed him while the scientist was not paying attention to
   him, occupied in thought. Einstein later called this portrait his
   favourite one of him. In 1946, Roman 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 photomicroscopy.

   Once in the United States, Roman Vishniac tried desperately to earn
   sympathy for impoverished Jews in Eastern Europe. When his work was
   exhibited at Teachers College, Columbia University in 1943, Vishniac
   wrote to Eleanor Roosevelt ( First Lady at the time), asking her to
   visit the exhibit, but she did not do so. He also sent some of his
   photographs to the president for which he was politely thanked.

   Of the 16,000 taken in Eastern Europe by Roman Vishniac, only 2,000
   photographs reached America. Most of these negatives were carefully
   hidden by Roman and his family; others were smuggled in by Vishniac's
   good friend Walter Bierer through Cuba. In the photographer's own
   words,


   Roman Vishniac

      I sewed some of the negatives into my clothing when I came to the
       United States in 1940. Most of them were left with my father in
    Clermont-Ferrand, a small city in central France. He survived there,
   hidden. He concealed the negatives under floorboards and behind picture
                                   frames.


   Roman Vishniac

Later life

   Roman Vishniac, c. 1981
   Enlarge
   Roman Vishniac, c. 1981

   Even when he grew older, Roman Vishniac was very active. In 1957, he
   was appointed research associate at the Albert Einstein College of
   Medicine and in 1961 ascended to the rank of " professor of biological
   education". In his seventies and eighties, Vishniac became "Chevron
   Professor of Creativity" at Pratt Institute (where he taught courses on
   topics such as the philosophy of photography). During this time he
   lived on the West Side of Manhattan with his wife Edith, teaching,
   photographing, reading and collecting artifacts. Some items that were
   in his collection include a 14th-century Buddha, Chinese tapestries,
   Japanese swords, various antique microscopes, valued old maps and
   venerable books). He taught Oriental and Russian art, general
   philosophy and religion in science, specifically Jewish topics,
   ecology, numismatics, photography and general science at City
   University of New York, Case Western Reserve University and at various
   other institutions.

   During the course of his life, Vishniac was the subject and creator of
   many films and documentaries; the most celebrated of which was the
   Living Biology series. The series consisted of seven films on cell
   biology; organs and systems; embryology; evolution; genetics; ecology;
   botany; the animal world; and the microbial world. This production was
   funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation's.

   Roman Vishniac received Honorary Doctoral degrees from the Rhode Island
   School of Design, Columbia College of Art and the California College of
   Art, before he died from colon cancer on January 22, 1990.

Photography

In Central and Eastern Europe

1935-1939

   Vishniac is best known for his dramatic photographs of Jews in cities
   and shtetlach of Eastern Europe. He was commissioned to take these
   pictures initially by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee
   as part of a fundraising initiative; but, Vishniac took a personal
   interest in this photography. He traveled back and forth from Berlin to
   the ghettos of Russia, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia and Lithuania
   for years after he worked for the Committee.

   While touring Europe, Roman Vishniac posed as a traveling fabric
   salesman, seeking aid where he could and bribing anyone who got in his
   way. 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, (Jews were not allowed to take pictures or even
   carry cameras). 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, ICP and other such
   institutions.

   Vishniac, being a Jew, had to struggle immensely to take the 16,000
   photos he did. Every one of his photos from this period was a candid
   shot; the subjects never even knew his camera existed. He also could
   not take more than one shot of a scene or buy two rolls of film at a
   time because he was not of Aryan descent. Vishniac sometimes developed
   his film in Berlin, other times he was forced to do it out on the
   countryside, in rivers of the Carpathian Mountains on a moonless night.

   In order to reach some of the small villages in these mountains, he had
   to carry heavy equipment (Leica, Rolliflex, movie camera, tripods
   etc.), 115  pounds (52 kilograms) by his estimate, on his back, up
   steep roads, trekking many miles. With a concealed Leica wrapped in a
   scarf at his forehead or a Rolleiflex peeking out through an enlarged
   button hole of his coat, Vishniac captured tens of thousands of
   impoverished Jews on film, "[...] to preserve – in pictures, at least –
   a world that might soon cease to exist". This Leica was acquired
   through a non-Jewish friend, but he had to give the camera back often
   (the police were trying to make sure that no Jews were using the
   camera, and they usually checked with his friend in the evenings).

   For indoor shots, when the Leica was used, there was the problem of
   insufficient lighting: there would rarely be artificial light in the
   home of a poor Jew. Vishniac could not use a tripod (for the camera had
   to remain concealed) to get long exposures, so he had to bring a
   kerosene lantern (visible in some of his work), keep his back to a wall
   for support, and hold 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 the Nazi persecution]",
   Mitgang. In late 1938, for example, he sneaked into Zbaszyn, an
   internment camp in Germany near the border, where Jews awaited
   deportment to Poland. After photographing the "filthy barracks", as he
   described it, for two days, he escaped by jumping from the second floor
   at night and creeping away, avoiding broken glass and barbed wire. He
   then used photographs taken to prove the existence of such camps to the
   League of Nations.

   After Roman's death, more photographs were discovered, and the current
   exhibit in Berlin showcases such newly discovered photographs. The
   negatives of these were found at the end of rolls of film used by him
   in his scientific pursuits.

Style

   Vishniac's photographs from the 1930s are all of a very distinct style;
   they are all focused on achieving the same end: capturing the unique
   culture of Jewish ghettos in Eastern Europe. His pictures all centre on
   these people, usually in small groups, going about their daily lives:
   very often studying (generally religious texts), walking (many times
   through harsh weather), and sometimes just sitting; staring. The scenes
   are dramatic though: "There is barely a hint of a smile on any of the
   faces. The eyes peer at us suspiciously from behind ancient casement
   windows and over a peddler's tray, from crowded schoolrooms and
   desolate street corners." Gene Thornton, writer for The New York Times,
   called them "[...] somber with poverty and with the gray light of
   European Winter".

   These pictures, all in black and white, were done with available light
   or sometimes a lantern, yet they are still, "amazingly crisp with
   surprising depth of field". 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."

Impact

   Vishinac's photographs from this period are widely commended and on
   permanent display in many museums. Edward Steichen places Roman
   Vishniac's pre-Holocaust photographs, "among photography's finest
   documents of a time and place."' However, there has been criticism of
   Vishniac's work, focusing on the lack of diversity of his subjects in
   his work from Eastern Europe and quality of his composition. It has
   been argued that he should have also photographed wealthier Jews, in
   addition to the poor Jews in ghettos. Thornton criticized his
   photographs for their unprofessional qualities, citing "errors of focus
   and accidents of design, as when an unexplained third leg and foot
   protrudes from the long coat of a hurrying scholar."

   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 fictional 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. He was also the
   winner of the visual arts category of awards of the Jewish Book Council
   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.

Photomicroscopy and biology

   In addition to the candid photography for which he is best known,
   Vishniac worked heavily in the field of photomicroscopy, (specifically
   interference microscopy and cinemicroscopy). He specialized in
   photographing live subjects, rather than the usual dead ones and had a
   knack for arranging the moving specimens in "just the right poses",
   according to Philipee Halsman, former president of the American Society
   of Magazine Photographers. On the subject of Vishniac's skill in
   photomicroscopy, Halsman said he was, "a special kind of genius". He
   worked with all sorts of specimens, from protozoa, to fireflies to
   amino acids. Vishniac's work in photomicroscopy is and was highly
   regarded in the field. For three consecutive years, beginning in 1952,
   he won the Best-of-the-Show Award of the Biological Photographic
   Association in New York.

   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
   colour photomicroscopy. His method of colorization, (developed in the
   1960s and early 1970s) uses polarized light to penetrate certain
   formations of cell structure and may greatly improve the detail of an
   image.

   In the field of biology, Vishniac specialized in marine microbiology,
   the physiology of ciliates, circulatory systems in unicellular plants
   and endocrinology (from his work in Berlin) and metamorphosis. Despite
   his apitude 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
   chromosomes in 1920: both in Berlin. As a biologist and philosopher in
   1950, he hypothesized polyphyletic origin, a theory that life arose
   from multiple, independent biochemical reactions, spawning
   multicellular life. As a philosopher, he "developed principles of
   rationalistic philosophy" in the '50s.

Other photography

   Vishniac is notable for his photographs of insects mating, sea bass
   feasting and other living creatures in full animation. Skillfully and
   patiently, Vishniac would stalk insects or other such creatures for
   hours in the suburbs around New York City. Before beginning the hunt,
   he would lie for over an hour in the grass, rubbing himself with
   proximate flora to make himself smell less artificial. Vishniac would
   then gracefully swoop close to his prey and patiently frame the scene
   with an SLR equipped with an extension tube. He had even trained
   himself to hold his breath for up to two minutes, so that he could take
   his time and not disturb slowly exposing images.

   Roman'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 photography, on which he worked from 1915 to
   1918, and again later in life.

Religion and philosophy

   Roman Vishniac always had strong ties with his ancestry, especially the
   Jewish aspect of it, "From earliest childhood, my main interest was my
   ancestors". He was a Zionist and a strong sympathizer with Jews who had
   suffered because of anti-Semitism, "Oh yes, I could be a professor of
   anti-Semitism", also stating then that he had one hundred and one
   relatives who died during the Holocaust. A famous photo of his
   (pictured right) of a store in Berlin selling devices for separating
   Jews and non-Jews by skull shape was used by him to criticize the
   pseudoscience of German anti-Semites.

   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 optimist
   filled with tragedy. His humanism is not just for Jews, but for every
   living thing." While he was alive, Roman 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 Jews 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 graven images.
   Vishniac's famous response was, "the Torah existed for thousands of
   years before the camera had been invented."

   Roman Vishniac was known for having great respect for all living
   creatures. Whenever possible, he returned a specimen to its precise
   home before it was captured and one time lent, "his bathtub to tadpoles
   for weeks until he could return them to their pond". In accordance with
   this philosophy, he photographed almost exclusively living subjects.

Publications

   Year Title Notes Source
   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 Vishniac] 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 Rafeal 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.
   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; Library of
   Congress Control #: 57003046 and 66006050
   1959 Living earth Drawings by Louise Katz; Subject: Soil biology
   1969 A Day of Pleasure : Stories of a Boy Growing Up in Warsaw Written
   by Isaac Bashevis Singer
   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, 1947, being
   completely redone and with many fewer photographs. This is probably the
   most well-known collection of Vishniac's and has independently
   contributed most to his popularity.
   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
   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

Major exhibitions

   Year Location Notes Source
   1943 Teacher's College, Columbia University, New York 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 U.S.A. by ICP. Note that 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 Centre of Photography, New York "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 Jewish Museum Berlin Title: "Roman Vishniac's Berlin"; exhibiting
   90 images, some never before seen by the public.
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