Washington DC Roman Vishniac show

[thompsonks]

Today I went to the Roman Vishniac exhibit @ Jewish Contemporary Museum in SF and spent a long time enjoying the show (plus the museum deli). I think others in the group would enjoy it too.

V. had sound artistic sensibilities in addition to being a devoted documentarian of European Jewish culture. He had a lifelong calling or mission to record the conditions and trials of his community, and he sometimes was sponsored by Jewish aid and relief agencies. He couldn't photograph the Nazis, but he photographed Jewish communities in the 1930s and then again after WWII. (He worked in NYC during the war.) I remember his images in photo magazines a long time ago, but he'd been mostly forgotten; so this extensive show is billed as a Rediscovery.

Many other photographers devote some time, sometimes years, to projects about a location, subculture, or ethnic group (for example Salgado), but it's not the same as Vishniac, who photographed the one culture to which he belonged for a lifetime.

The show contains a blend of vintage gelatin-silver prints and contemporary inkjet ones, the latter by ICP (where the show originated).

Kirk

 

[charjohncarter]

Thanks for the info on this exhibit. I've been to that museum but not recently. I'll try to hop on BART and get off at Montgomery to visit. I like these pure play photographers, not like today when they jump from one crisis point to the next.

 

[sanmich]

His book is very good.

 

[mfogiel]

I've seen the show in the Jewish Museum in Warsaw, and was substantially impressed both with the content and with the technical quality of the images, which is sort of sobering, given that he was using one of the very first Rolleiflex models for most of these images, a camera that most of us would consider today as good for shelf life only.

 

[Jamie Pillers]

Thanks for the heads-up, Kirk. Its been some years since I looked through the "A Vanishing World" book, but I remember feeling the power of that body of work. I look forward to seeing the prints.

 

[thompsonks]

One of you local folks was kind enough to send me this article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/04/magazine/04shtetl-t.html?_r=1

It's respectful of Vishniac's work, but points out that he used some questionable editing and cropping techniques, and some embellishment in captions, to sustain a particular point of view.

But he didn't Photoshop anything!

Kirk