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LOT 111:
Roman Vishniac - An original photograph of an elderly Jew from Varchni (Ukraine) - 1938
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Sold for: $320
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Roman Vishniac - An original photograph of an elderly Jew from Varchni (Ukraine) - 1938
A photograph of a Jewish elder from the town of Vrchni in Zakarpattia (Ukraine), by the great Jewish photographer of the 20th century Roman Vishniac. Photographed in 1938. This photo was selected for the cover of Vishniac's famous photo book "A Vanished Word" (first published in New York in 1947). Described on the back by hand in pencil.
Roman Vishniac (1897-1990) was one of the greatest Jewish photographers of the 20th century. An American Jewish photographer of Russian descent who became famous for the authentic and dramatic photographs of Central and Eastern European Jewish culture before the Holocaust - the Jewish shtetl and ghettos, portraits of well-known personalities, rabbis and rebbes, and anonymous Jewish figures representing an entire generation. While traveling in Europe, he walked dressed in clothes of a cloth merchant, relying on the help of local Jews and occasionally bribing those who tried to stop him on his way. During these years he was often arrested by the police because he was caught taking a photos. He was sometimes suspected of espionage (at that time Jews were forbidden to take a photos or even carry a camera). Years later he exhibited his photographs, sometimes in solo exhibitions in various museums and institutions. Each of the 16,000 photographs he took required effort; Many of them were photographed in hiding, sometimes without the knowledge of those photographed. Vishniac even had difficulty purchasing footage for his camera, since he was Jewish. Sometimes he developed his photos in Berlin and other times he did so in nature, in river water on moonless nights. In his photographs, he documented tens of thousands of poor Jews in Eastern Europe. His photographs was published in the important book "A Vanished Word" which was first published in 1947 (And later published in several editions with an introduction by Eli Wiesel) and is one of the most important books that documented in photographs the culture of Eastern European Jewry before the Holocaust.
See also: Roman Vishniac "A Vanished Word" New York 1983, Book Cover, and Photo 3.
9x7 cm. Very good condition.
