Hard Times

"Father earned today some money and daughter is sent for milk," Roman Vishniac, 1937

Occupy Wall Street has placed the alarming gap between rich and poor in our country front and center. For me the first images of poverty and destitution that come to mind, aside from the actual scenes of everyday life in some parts of New York, are the photos of Roman Vishniac from pre-war Jewish Galicia. For those of you who don't know, the photographs that made up the famous book of pictures, "די פארשווונדענע וועלט", The Vanished World were probably, in part, commisioned by The Joint Distribution Committee, an organization founded by Jews in 1914 to assist Jews (mainly in Palestine) in dire need during WWI. Its mission soon widened to funnel monies to poor and distressed Jews across the globe. As it turns out Vishniac was very selective in his photographing of Jews in Galicia; this is obvious to anyone with eyes in his head. So the New York Times ("A Closer Reading of Roman Vishniac," Magazine, 4/1/2010) broke the story of Vishniac and the Joint's collusion in presenting a very particular picture of Jews in Eastern Europe. The "damning" evidence, this sentence from a biography of the famous photographer: "The Joint Distribution Committee representatives in Berlin asked Roman, who was known for his photographic work, to travel to Eastern Europe, in order to document daily life in the shtetls." So what? Yes, later Vishniac would present the work in a different light, but for God's sake the man, an artist, went on a mission for the poor to the region his family had fled from years earlier and yes, produced propaganda on behalf of the poor! Halevay! If only in our day we had a Roman Vishniac...