Roman Vishniac facts for kids
Roman Vishniac (born August 19, 1897 – died January 22, 1990) was a Russian-American photographer and biologist. He is most famous for taking pictures of Jewish communities in Central and Eastern Europe just before the Holocaust. His photos helped show the world what life was like for these communities before they were destroyed. A large collection of his work is now kept at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life at the University of California, Berkeley.
Vishniac was a very talented person. Besides being a photographer, he was also a skilled biologist, an art collector, and a teacher of art history. He made important scientific discoveries in how to photograph tiny things through a microscope (photomicroscopy) and how to take pictures over time (time-lapse photography). He cared deeply about history, especially his Jewish heritage, and later in life, he supported Zionism, a movement to create a Jewish homeland. His book, A Vanished World, published in 1983, made him very well-known. It's one of the most detailed photo collections showing Jewish culture in Eastern Europe during the 1930s. People also remember Vishniac for his kindness and respect for all living things, which you can see in all his work.
Quick facts for kids
Roman Vishniac
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| Роман Соломонович Вишняк | |
Roman Vishniac, 1977
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| Born | August 19, 1897 Pavlovsk, Russian Empire
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| Died | January 22, 1990 (aged 92) New York City, United States
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| Nationality | Russian, American |
| Occupation | Photographer, biologist |
| Spouse(s) |
Luta (Leah) Bagg
(m. 1918; div. 1946)Edith Ernst
(m. 1947) |
| Children | Wolf V. Vishniac 1922–1973, Mara Vishniac 1926–2018 |
| Relatives |
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Biography
Early Life and Discoveries
Roman Vishniac was born in 1897 in Pavlovsk, a town near Saint Petersburg, Russia. He grew up in Moscow. His family was able to live there because his father was a successful umbrella maker. His mother's family were wealthy diamond dealers.
From a young age, Roman loved biology and photography. His room was full of plants, insects, fish, and small animals. For his seventh birthday, his grandmother gave him a microscope. He quickly attached a camera to it and used it to photograph a cockroach's leg, magnified 150 times! He spent hours looking at and photographing everything from dead insects to pollen.
Roman was homeschooled until he was ten. Then he went to a private school where he was an excellent student. In 1914, he started studying zoology at the Shanyavsky Institute in Moscow. He worked with a famous biologist named Nikolai Koltzoff. They did experiments to make axolotls (a type of salamander) change their form. His experiments worked, but he couldn't publish his findings because of the Russian Revolution.
Life in Berlin
In 1918, Vishniac's family moved to Berlin, Germany, because of growing anti-Jewish feelings in Russia. Roman followed them and soon married Luta Bagg. They had two children, Mara and Wolf. In Berlin, Roman studied Far Eastern Art and continued his photography. He also gave talks about nature at a club called the Salamander Club.
As anti-Jewish feelings grew in Germany in 1935, a group called the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) asked Vishniac to photograph Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. This was to help raise money for these poor communities. Vishniac traveled between Berlin and the Jewish neighborhoods (ghettos) in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania from 1935 to 1938. He used Leica and Rolleiflex cameras for his work. In 1939, his wife and children moved to Sweden to be safe.
In 1940, Vishniac went to Paris. He was arrested by the police because his home country, Latvia, had become part of the Soviet Union, making him "stateless." After three months, his wife and the JDC helped him get a special paper (visa) to escape to the United States. His father stayed hidden in France, and his mother died in Nice.
Starting Over in New York
The Vishniac family arrived in New York City on New Year's Eve in 1940. Roman found it hard to get a job because he didn't speak English well, even though he knew German, Russian, and Yiddish. He tried taking portraits, mostly of people from other countries, but business was slow.
In 1942, he took one of his most famous portraits: a picture of Albert Einstein. He visited Einstein's home in Princeton, New Jersey, pretending to bring greetings from friends in Europe. He photographed Einstein while the scientist was deep in thought, not even noticing him. Einstein later said this was his favorite portrait.
In 1946, Roman divorced Luta and married Edith Ernst, an old family friend. A few years later, he stopped taking portraits and started working as a freelance photomicroscopist.
Once in the U.S., Vishniac tried hard to get people to care about the poor Jews in Eastern Europe. He showed his photos at Columbia University in 1943 and even wrote to First Lady Eleanor Roosevelt, asking her to visit. He also sent photos to President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Out of 16,000 photos he took in Eastern Europe, only 2,000 made it to America. He and his family carefully hid most of the negatives.
Later Years and Legacy
Even as he got older, Vishniac remained very active. In 1957, he became a research associate at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine. Later, he taught at Pratt Institute, covering topics like the philosophy of photography. He lived in New York City with his wife, Edith, teaching, photographing, and collecting interesting items. His collection included ancient Buddhas, Chinese tapestries, Japanese swords, and old microscopes. He taught many subjects, including art, philosophy, science, and Jewish topics, at various universities.
Vishniac was featured in and created many films and documentaries. His most famous was the "Living Biology" series, which included seven films about cell biology, organs, evolution, and the animal world. He received honorary degrees from several art schools before he passed away from colon cancer on January 22, 1990.
Photography
Capturing Eastern Europe (1935–1939)
Roman Vishniac is most famous for his powerful photographs of poor and religious Jews in the cities and small towns (shtetls) of Eastern Europe. The American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) hired him to take these pictures to help raise money. However, Vishniac also had a deep personal interest in this project. He traveled between Berlin and the Jewish ghettos in Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, and Lithuania from 1935 to 1938.
While traveling, Vishniac often pretended to be a fabric salesman. He would seek help where he could and sometimes bribe people to get his photos. He was often arrested by police for taking pictures, as they sometimes thought he was a spy. When his photos were later shown, they became very popular. They were displayed in museums like Columbia University and the Jewish Museum in New York.
Vishniac said he took 16,000 photos during this time, all candid shots (meaning people weren't posing). He wanted to "preserve — in pictures, at least — a world that might soon cease to exist." He carried heavy equipment, including Leica and Rolleiflex cameras, weighing about 115 pounds (52 kilograms), up steep roads. For indoor shots with little light, he sometimes used a kerosene lamp. He would hold his breath to keep the camera steady.
Roman Vishniac didn't just want to save memories; he actively tried to warn the world about the terrible situation in Eastern Europe. For example, in late 1938, he secretly entered Zbaszyn, an internment camp in Germany where Jews were waiting to be sent to Poland. He photographed the "filthy barracks" for two days. He escaped by jumping from a second-floor window at night. These photos were sent to the League of Nations to prove such camps existed. After Vishniac died, many photos of Berlin life from 1920 to 1939 were also discovered.
His Unique Style
Vishniac's photos from the 1930s have a very special look. They all aimed to capture the unique culture of Jewish ghettos, especially the religious and poor people. His published pictures usually show these people in small groups, doing everyday things. They are often studying religious texts, walking in harsh weather, or just sitting and staring. The scenes are dramatic. A writer for The New York Times described them as "somber with poverty and with the gray light of European Winter."
These black and white pictures were taken with natural light or sometimes a lantern. They are "amazingly crisp with surprising depth of field." You can almost feel the rough textures of the coats and shawls in the photos. Vishniac was known to sometimes add dramatic stories or details to the captions of his photographs.
The Impact of His Work
Vishniac's photographs from this time are highly praised and are shown in many museums permanently. Edward Steichen, a famous photographer, called his pre-Holocaust photos "among photography's finest documents of a time and place."
Vishniac's photos have greatly influenced books about the Jewish ghettos and the Holocaust. For example, the powerful photo The Only Flowers of her Youth inspired a novelist to write a story based on the girl in the picture.
For his work, Roman Vishniac received the Memorial Award from the American Society of Magazine Photographers in 1956. His book A Vanished World won the National Jewish Book Award in 1984. The Only Flowers of her Youth was called "most impressive" at an exhibition in Switzerland in 1952.
Some Criticisms
Some people have criticized Vishniac's work. They point out that he mostly photographed poor Jews and not wealthier ones. Also, some critics noted small technical flaws in his photos, like focus errors.
A curator named Maya Benton, who organized Vishniac's negatives, found that in his book A Vanished World, Vishniac sometimes put photos together to tell stories that might not have happened. For example, he showed a man hiding from a political party and his son signaling them approaching. But Benton found the photos were from different places and times, so the scene likely wasn't real. She also found negatives of the little girl in The Only Flowers of her Youth (whom Vishniac said had no shoes) smiling and wearing shoes.
It's thought that because the JDC hired him to photograph "the most needy, vulnerable corners" of Jewish life to raise money, his book focused heavily on poor, religious communities.
Photomicroscopy and Biology
Besides his famous candid photography, Vishniac also worked a lot in photomicroscopy. This means taking pictures through a microscope, especially using special techniques like interference microscopy and cinemicroscopy. He was very good at photographing living insects and arranging them perfectly. Philippe Halsman, a former president of the American Society of Magazine Photographers, called him "a special kind of genius" for this skill. He photographed all kinds of tiny things, from single-celled organisms to fireflies and amino acids. His work in photomicroscopy was highly respected. He won the Best-of-the-Show Award three years in a row starting in 1952.
One of Roman Vishniac's most famous achievements in photomicroscopy was his amazing photos from inside a firefly's eye. He also took pictures of blood flowing inside a hamster's cheek. Vishniac invented new ways to take photos using light and to add color to microscopic images. His colorization method, developed in the 1960s and 1970s, used polarized light to show more detail in cell structures.
In biology, Vishniac studied tiny sea creatures, how single-celled plants circulate things, and how animals change form (metamorphosis). Even though he was very good at biology, most of his biological work helped his photography. He studied how organisms were built mainly to photograph them better. He also researched chromosomes in 1920. As a biologist and thinker, he suggested in the 1950s that life might have started from many different chemical reactions.
Other Photography Work
Vishniac was known for his photos of insects mating, sea bass eating, and other living creatures in action. He would patiently follow insects or other animals for hours near New York City. Before starting, he would lie in the grass for over an hour, rubbing himself with plants to make himself smell more natural. Then he would slowly get close to his subject and carefully frame the shot with his camera. He even trained himself to hold his breath for up to two minutes so he wouldn't disturb the slow-moving creatures while taking pictures.
Vishniac's photography subjects changed throughout his life. Sometimes, he focused on everyday life, like in Berlin. Later, he did portraits, including famous ones of Albert Einstein and Marc Chagall. He was also a pioneer in time-lapse photography, a technique he worked on early in his career and again later in life.
Beliefs and Philosophy
Roman Vishniac always felt a strong connection to his ancestors, especially his Jewish heritage. He once said, "From earliest childhood, my main interest was my ancestors." He was a Zionist and deeply sympathized with Jews who suffered from anti-Jewish hatred. He even said he had 101 relatives who were killed in the Holocaust. One of his famous photos (pictured right) shows a store in Berlin selling tools to tell Jews and non-Jews apart by skull shape. He used this photo to criticize the false science of German anti-Semites.
Vishniac connected much of his work with religion, though not just Judaism. He once said in his lab, "Nature, God, or whatever you want to call the creator of the Universe comes through the microscope clearly and strongly."
Living with memories of hardship, Vishniac was "an absolute optimist filled with tragedy." His kindness was not just for Jews but for every living thing. He likely believed in God or a similar concept, but he wasn't tied to one specific religion. He even had a famous disagreement with Orthodox Jews he met in Europe. They didn't want to be photographed, quoting the Bible's rule against making "graven images." Vishniac's famous reply 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 would return a specimen to its exact home after photographing it. Once, he even "lent his bathtub to tadpoles for weeks until he could return them to their pond." Because of this belief, he almost always photographed living subjects.
Major Exhibitions
| Year | Location | Notes | Source |
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| 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. | |
| 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 | New York, 1971-72]" |
Images for kids
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Later model of the Rolleiflex camera such as was used by Vishniac in Eastern Europe
See also
- International Center of Photography
- American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee — The group that first asked Vishniac to photograph Eastern Europe.
- The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life — This organization now owns the rights to Roman Vishniac's photos.
Photography
- Time-lapse — A photography technique Vishniac helped develop.
- Documentary photography
People
- Wolf V. Vishniac — Roman's son, a microbiologist, who died during an expedition to Antarctica in 1973.
- Ethan Vishniac — Roman's grandson and Wolf's son, who is an editor for the Astrophysical Journal.
- Cornell Capa — The person who founded the International Center of Photography.
- Alter Kacyzne — Another photographer from Vishniac's time who took similar pictures.
