#vishniac

[czarnika]

Roman Vishniac. 'Szeroka and Isaac Street' 1938 Kazimierz, Kraków Poland

[detournementsmineurs]

“La Femme de Nat Gutman, Porteur, Varsovie” de Roman Vishniac (1938) à l'exposition “Etranger Résident : la Collection Marin Karmitz” à la Maison Rouge, Bastille, décembre 2017.

[camfoc]

Roman Vishniac  (1897-1990),  “A Vanished World”. Father taking his son to the first day of cheder. Mukachevo, 1938. Silver gelatin print.

“Avevo sentito dire che un bambino di quattro anni avrebbe iniziato il cheder (scuola elementare ebraica) il giorno seguente. Portava fortuna, mi si disse, essere la prima persona ch'egli incontrasse quel mattino. Mi alzai prima delle cinque, e scattai una foto del bambino alla soglia della sua nuova vita. Facendogli i miei migliori auguri.”  R.V.

Born in 1897 to an affluent Russian Jewish family, Vishniac immigrated to Berlin in 1920 in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution. As an amateur photographer, he took to the streets with his camera throughout the 1920s and ’30s, offering astute, often humorous visual commentary on his adopted city and experimented with new and modern approaches to framing and composition. Documenting the rise of Nazi power, he focused his lens on the signs of oppression and doom that soon formed the backdrop of his Berlin street photography. From ca. 1935 to 1938, while living in Berlin and pursuing his lifelong interests in zoology, biology and science photography, he was commissioned by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), the world’s largest Jewish relief organization, to photograph impoverished Jewish communities in central and eastern Europe. On New Year’s Eve, 1940, he arrived in New York and soon opened a portrait studio. At the same time, he began documenting American Jewish communal and immigrant life and established himself as a pioneer in the field of photomicroscopy. In 1947, Vishniac returned to Europe and documented Jewish Displaced Persons camps and the ruins of Berlin. During this time, he also recorded the efforts of Holocaust survivors to rebuild their lives, and the work of the JDC and other Jewish relief organizations in providing them with aid and emigration assistance.   (source)

[pruxxx]

"Quanto pesa una lacrima? Dipende: la lacrima di un bambino capriccioso pesa meno del vento, quella di un bambino affamato pesa più di tutta la terra" - Roman Vishniac -

[newnewyear]

Roman Vishniac