A Berlin street, 1933
See swastika flag over the door on left
Roman Vishniac Rediscovered was the first UK retrospective of this photographer. Curated by U.S photography scholar Maya Benton, and spread across two London sites: the Photographers’ Gallery and the Jewish Museum, the exhibition ended in Feb 2019. Many of his most iconic works from the Roman Vishniac Archive at the International Center of Photography NY were included.
Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) was born to a Jewish family in a small Russian town, then his parents moved to Moscow. The parents must have been wealthy or influential, because Jews were normally not allowed outside the Pale of Settlement. As a child Roman received a camera and a microscope which began his love of photography and science.
After the Russian Revolution, Roman and his young wife Luta arrived in Berlin via Moscow and Riga. There Vishniac was reunited with his wealthy parents, who had already left Russia, and he and Luta were married again in a proper Jewish ceremony. The story of their trip westward was part of Vishniac’s amazing life, which was lived out against Europe’s turbulent early-to-mid C20th history.
Thus their new life began in Berlin, a city that Vishniac called “a living whole … the centre of western Europe”. There Vishniac joined some of the many flourishing camera clubs. Inspired by the cosmopolitanism and rich cultural experimentation in Berlin, Vishniac used photographs to document his surroundings. This early body of work reflected the influence of European modernism - his framing, sharp angles and dramatic use of light and shade.
In Berlin, his interest in street photography and social documentary arose, just as the nation was experiencing huge political changes. His images showed an unsettling visual foreboding of the growing signs of oppression, loss of rights for Jews, rise of Nazism in Germany, insidious propaganda swastika flags and military parades. By the mid 1930s, he was catching the daily ebb and flow of the German capital, his outsider’s eye locating the details that told an increasingly ominous story.
Berlin was a society in which ordinary life was becoming more extreme before Nazi rule. Social and political documentation quickly became a focal point of his work and drew the attention of organisations wanting to raise awareness and support for the Jewish population. In 1935, Vishniac was commissioned by JDC, the large Jewish relief organisation American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, to photograph impoverished Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. In fact he did dozens of trips to eastern Europe over 4 years, to Poland, Hungary, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Lithuania and Latvia. These images were intended to support relief efforts, used in fundraising campaigns for an American audience.
A Polish school for Jewish boys, 1936
A Polish couple shopping, 1938
When the war broke out a few years later, his photos served urgent refugee efforts. Vishniac left Europe and arrived in New York with his family in late 1941. He continued to record the impact of WW2 in the USA, focusing on the arrival of Jewish refugees and other immigrants to the USA. In 1947 he returned home to document refugees and relief efforts in Jewish Displaced Persons camps, and to witness the ruins of his adopted hometown, Berlin. Post-war, Vishniac’s images became the most comprehensive photographic record of a world that had disappeared.
The London retrospective presented a timely reappraisal of Vishniac’s vast photographic legacy. It brought together his complete works, including recently discovered vintage prints, rare and lost film footage from the early 1920s on, contact sheets, personal correspondence, original magazine publications and newly created exhibition prints.
Berlin Street, 1933