Three Student School, Carpathian Ruthenia, 1938. Roman Vishniac.
“Roman Vishniac, sensing the doom of the Jewish ghetto life in Eastern Europe spent the late 1930’s secretly photographing its many aspects.”
Carpathian Ruthenia is an old name for the region that became eastern Czechoslovakia.
* “This little boy might have perished in the Holocaust like hundreds of thousands of other children. Today we know that he did not.”
Jews had been living in Eastern Europe for about 700 years when the Nazis showed up in the 1930’s.
*”By some miracle the boy survived and came to America where, four decades later, he was surprised to recognize himself in Vishniac’s classic.”
Blogfinger ran a post about Vishniac last year. Here is a link:
Photography was invented in 1826 and became recognized as an art form around 1910. Lee Witkin opened one of the first photography galleries in 1969.
*The quotes above regarding this image are from a book called A Ten Year Salute. This book consists of a selection of photographs in celebration of ten years of the pioneering Witkin Gallery in NYC (1969-1979.) Lee Witkin organized the collection.
Blogfinger will get busier acquainting our readers with the great past artists of photography, especially the women whom we have been featuring in the past.
Paul Goldfinger, MD. Editor Blogfinger.net
JOHN WILLIAMS “Hatikvah” (The Hope) from the movie score Munich. “Hatikvah” is the national anthem of Israel.