| Dates: | 1897 - 1990 | | Born: | Russia, Parlosk | | Active: | US | | Gender: | Male |
His early work was in the ghettos of Germany and Eastern Europe in the 1930s. After he immigrated to the USA in 1940 he did portrait and medical photography.Preparing biographies
Biography provided by Focal Press
Produced a heroic photographic record of the final hours of pre-holocaust Jewish life in Eastern Europe in the late 1930s At great personal risk, traveled through Lithuania, Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, and Latvia, compiling over 16,000 images (of which 2000 remain) of Jewish village life soon to be eradicated by Hitler. His poetic images, bravely captured with a hidden camera, are a most poignant reminder of photography’s gift of memory. He emigrated to the United States in 1940, where he pursued a remarkable career in the biological sciences and was a renowned pioneer in photomicrography and time-lapse cinematography.
(Author: Garie Waltzer - Photographer and consultant)
Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409]
(Used with permission)
  
General reading
Capa, Cornell (ed.), 1972, The Concerned Photographer 2, (New York: Grossman Publishers in cooperation with The International Fund for Concerned Photography) [Δ]
Readings on, or by, individual photographers
Flacks, Miriam Hartman & Kohn, Mara Vishniac, 1999, Roman Vishniac: Children of a Vanished World, (Los Angeles: University of California Press) [Δ]
Fraser, James Howard; Kohn, Mara Vishniac & Pomerance, Aubrey, 2005, Roman Vishniac’s Berlin, (Berlin: Nicolaische Verlagsbuchhandlung) [Δ]
Kinkead, Eugene & Capa, Cornell (ed.), 1974, Roman Vishniac, (New York: Grossman Publishers) [Δ]
Newhouse, Alan, 2010, ‘A Closer Reading of Roman Vishniac‘, The New York Times Sunday Magazine, pp.MM36 [Δ]
Shandler, Jeffrey, 2003, ‘The Time of Vishniac: Photographs of Prewar Eastern European Jewry in Post-War Contexts‘, Polin: A Journal of Polish-Jewish Studies, vol.16 [Δ]
Vishniac, Roman, 1969, A Vanished World, (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux) [Δ]
Vishniac, Roman, 1983, A Vanished World, (New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux) [Δ]
Vishniac, Roman, 1986, A Vanished World - Roman Vishniac, (Douglas & McIntyre) isbn-10: 0374520232 isbn-13: 978-0374520236 [Foreword by Elie Wiesel] [Δ]
Vishniac, Roman & Heschel, Abraham Joshua (ed.), 1947, Polish Jews: A Pictorial Record, (New York: Schocken Books) [Δ]
Wiesel, Marion & Vishniac, Roman, 1993, To Give Them Light: The Legacy of Roman Vishniac, (New York: Simon and Schuster) [Δ]
If you feel this list is missing a significant book or article please let me know - Alan - alan@luminous-lint.com | |
Family history
If you are related to this photographer and interested in tracking down your extended family we can place a note here for you to help. It is free and you would be amazed who gets in touch.
alan@luminous-lint.com |
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 | Roman Vishniac: Entrance to the Ghetto, Cracow |
|  | Roman Vishniac: Granddaughter and Grandfather, Warsaw |
|  | Roman Vishniac: Street photography |
| | Roman Vishniac: The Face of Wisdom, Cracow |
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All photographs by this photographer
| Wikipedia has a biography of this photographer. | Show on this site | Go to website | | Getty Research, Los Angeles, USA has an ULAN (Union List of Artists Names Online) entry for this photographer. This is useful for checking names and they frequently provide a brief biography. | | Go to website |
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
• Beaton, Cecil & Buckland, Gail 1975 The Magic Eye: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown & Company) p.164 [Useful short biographies with personal asides and one or more example images.]
• Capa, Cornell (ed.) 1984 The International Center of Photography: Encyclopedia of Photography (New York, Crown Publishers, Inc. - A Pound Press Book) p.537-538
• Evans, Martin Marix (Executive ed.) 1995 Contemporary Photographers [Third Edition] (St. James Press - An International Thomson Publishing Company) [Expensive reference work but highly informative.]
• International Center of Photography 1999 Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection (New York: A Bulfinch Press Book) p.230 [Includes a well written short biography on Roman Vishniac with example plate(s) earlier in book.]
• Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London 1979 The Photograph Collector’s Guide (London: Secker and Warburg) p.262-263 [Long out of print but an essential reference work - the good news is that a new edition is in preparation.]
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If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here. |
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