Born into a wealthy, Russian-speaking family that settled in Berlin after the Bolshevik Revolution, the photographer Roman Vishniac traveled extensively in Poland, Romania, and Czechoslovakia in the late 1930s, photographing pious and impoverished Jews. The images he created, which were widely distributed in the postwar period, shaped popular perceptions of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. He came to America in 1940 and after the war worked extensively in photomicroscopy, building on his earlier training in biology, zoology, and endocrinology.
Jewish graveyard near Leningrad.
Crooked fence of rotten plywood.
Behind the fence lie side by side
lawyers, merchants, musicians, and revolutionaries.
For themselves they were singing.
For…
Henriette de Lemos Herz (1764–1847) was a Berlin salon hostess famed for her beauty and literary engagement. She was highly educated, especially in ancient and modern languages. Following her marriage…
Schatz, a founder of the Bezalel School of Arts and Crafts, painted this self-portrait around the time the school was temporarily forced to close because of a lack of funds. He has depicted himself in…