Holocaust Museum Houston is proud to present the work of famed photographer Roman Vishniac, recently donated to HMH’s permanent collection by his daughter, Mara Vishniac Kohn, with the support of the International Center of Photography (ICP), in this new exhibition “Roman Vishniac: A Selection from the Permanent Collection of Holocaust Museum Houston.”
Boy suffering from a toothache clutches a tattered school notebook, Slonim, ca. 1935-38. © Mara Vishniac Kohn, courtesy International Center of Photography.
The HMH exhibition is presented in conjunction with the retrospective exhibition, “Roman Vishniac Rediscovered,” at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston. On display at HMH will be 11 of Vishniac’s gelatin silver prints, highlighting Jewish life in Eastern Europe, ca. 1935-1938.
The HMH exhibition opens Sept. 25, 2015, and runs through Jan. 24, 2016, in the Central Gallery at the Museum’s Morgan Family Center, 5401 Caroline St. in Houston’s Museum District. HMH members are invited to a free preview reception from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 24, 2015. To RSVP online, visit www.hmh.org/RegisterEvent.aspx. To renew a membership or to join and attend, visit www.hmh.org, e-mail membership@hmh.org or call 713-527-1640.
Commissioned ca. 1935 by the European office of the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee, Vishniac began touring the cities and villages of Eastern Europe, recording life in Jewish communities. Through his photography, he documented poverty and the effects of antisemitic boycotts. Since Vishniac’s death in 1990, thousands of previously unknown photographs, spanning more than five decades, were discovered. As a result, the ICP has established a comprehensive archive – 40,000 objects and nearly 10,000 negatives, which are available online at http://vishniac.icp.org/.
Photographs highlighted in HMH’s exhibition include “Boy suffering from a toothache clutches a tattered school notebook, Slonim, ca. 1935-38,” a poignant image of a young boy with his head wrapped to ease a toothache. Also on display, will be “Fish seller and his wife in the market on Friday, Kazimierz, Krakow, ca. 1935-38.” This photograph captures a moment in Kazimierz daily life, the well-known Jewish Quarter of Krakow, Poland.
During Nazi occupation, Oscar Schindler, whose efforts were documented in the movie “Schindler’s List,” saved some of the Kazimierz residents, but most were deported and died in concentration and extermination camps.
Patron sponsors Three Brothers Bakery and Susan D. Krohn Sarofim
