Roman Vishniac: De Berlin à New York, 1920-1975

The Russian-born American photographer Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) is best known for capturing the world that came to an end with the Holocaust. On the request of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Vishniac spent four years in the late ’30s documenting the lives of ordinary Eastern European Jews. The resulting oeuvre is a sweeping, shimmering profile of a society that would soon be shattered in the most brutal fashion imaginable. It is also typical of Vishniac's tendency to work on commission, and with a clear programme in mind. Needless to say, the career of a man who lived to 92 cannot be boiled down to a single four-year period; as its name suggests, this exhibition spans over half a century of work, from his early US street photography to his peculiar micrograph phase in the ’70s. A wonderful tribute to an under-appreciated artist.