The Jewish Museum Presents Lecture on Roman Vishniac's Photography

The Jewish Museum will present Picturing Vishniac: Re-examining the Photography of Roman Vishniac on Thursday, March 10 at 6:30 pm. Roman Vishniac's photographs are the most widely recognized and reproduced images of Jewish life in Eastern Europe before the Holocaust. His photographs shape our memory of that vanished world, yet only a few hundred of his images - a very small fraction of his life's work - have ever been printed or published. In her lecture, Maya Benton, Adjunct Curator at the International Center of Photography (ICP), will discuss the recent donation of Vishniac's entire estate to the ICP, and the creation of the Vishniac archive. The presentation will include never-before-seen moving film footage; images of Zionist agrarian training camps in Holland before World War II and Displaced Persons camps in Berlin following the war; photos from 1940s America documenting the work of Jewish social service organizations; and a large selection of contact sheets, negatives, and work from Central and Eastern Europe.

Ms. Benton will also cover the influence of European avant-garde movements on Vishniac's most accomplished work, and share new research focusing on the commission of Vishniac's photographs by the Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), repositioning him within the broader context of 1930s commissioned social documentary photography. The program will reveal a profoundly versatile artist who belongs firmly in the canon of the great photographers of the 20th century.

Tickets for this program are $15 for the general public; $12 for students and seniors; and $10 for Jewish Museum members. For further information regarding programs at The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3337. Tickets for lectures, film screenings and concerts at The Jewish Museum can now be purchased online at the Museum's Web site, www.thejewishmuseum.org.

Maya Benton is an art historian who focuses on documentary photographs of Jewish life in central and eastern Europe in the interwar period. She has worked with the Vishniac family since 2001. In 2007, she oversaw the transfer of the entire estate to the International Center of Photography and will curate the Vishniac retrospective opening in 2013 at ICP.

An infrared assistive listening system for the hearing impaired is available for programs in the Museum's S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer Auditorium.

Photo by Andrew A. Skolnick