Roman Vishniac Rediscovered Jewish Museum, London, and The

Exhibitions choice of studies and the use of wall 21. La coiffure, Hoenigswald, among the appendices. richer in up-to-date information and texts and labels to point up the many by Pablo Picasso. Few people will read the catalogue occasionally enlivened by quotations 1906. Canvas, cases where Picasso obliterated an 174.9 by 99.7 cm. from cover to cover; those that do from unpublished archives. If one earlier composition by painting over (Metropolitan may wish a firmer editorial hand had can ignore the baffling numbering it or transformed a composition Museum of and put up with the tiny font and Art, New York; eliminated the tiresome repetitions by extensively reworking it. Thus, exh. Fondation and either resolved troubling dazzling blue and red print used for preparatory sketches for La vie and Beyeler, Basel). inconsistencies and contradictions the entries, it will probably be to a reproduction of an X-radiograph or flagged them up, since significant them that Picasso specialists will bore witness to its laboured execution differences of opinion are, of course, want to return. and beautiful drawings hung nearby valid. More than thirty authors were 1 Catalogue: Picasso. Bleu et Rose. Edited by of a disconsolate naked couple enlisted and by no means all took on Laurent Le Bon, Claire Bernardi, Stéphanie confirmed Picasso’s preoccupation Mollins and Émilia Philippot. 408 pp. incl. 293 board the curators’ warnings against col. + b. & w. ills. (Musée d’Orsay, Paris, and with the concept of the Fall. Earlier periodisation, writing instead as if Musée national Picasso-Paris in association in the show, viewers were stopped in ‘Blue’ and ‘Rose’ were distinct entities with Éditions Hazan, Vanves, 2018), €45. ISBN 978–2–7541–1474–5. their tracks by a double-sided canvas linked by ‘transitional’ episodes. 2 Catalogue: Der junge Picasso: Blaue und standing on a plinth in the middle of The mini-essays are directed at Rosa Periode. Edited by Raphaël Bouvier, with contributions by Christine Burger. 56 the gallery: on the recto they faced the general reader, summarising pp. incl. 40 col. ills. (Hatje Cantz, Berlin, 2019), the excessively sketchy, Lautrec-like material and arguments published in €12. ISBN 978–3–7757–4506–2. 3 P. Daix, G. Boudaille and J. Rosselet: Woman at the theatre (cat. fig.67) and on a more scholarly and nuanced way Picasso 1900–1906: Catalogue raisonné de the verso the more smoothly brushed, elsewhere. In general, indeed, the l’œuvre peint, Neuchâtel 1988. 4 J. Richardson with M. McCully: A Life of Gauguinesque Absinthe drinker (cat. documentary ‘Journal’ and extended Picasso, I, 1881–1906, New York 1991. fig.73; Fig.20). Executed at most a entries on exhibited works are more few months apart in the summer and satisfactory – subtler in analysis, autumn of 1901, these compositions Roman Vishniac Rediscovered dramatised the shift in style and Jewish Museum, London, and technique that occurred during The Photographers’ Gallery, London Picasso’s second trip to Paris and, 25th October–24th February 2019 more generally, his propensity to make startlingly radical rather than gently by marina vaizey incremental changes. In the catalogue, essays by Reyes Jiménez-Garnica A peculiarly poignant photograph by and Ann Hoenigswald develop Roman Vishniac (1897–1990) shows a this valuable aspect of the show by group of beaming Jewish schoolboys summarising fascinating discoveries in the ghetto of Mukacevo, Western made in conservation studios. Indeed, Ukraine (cat. pl.61; Fig.22). It is an the exhibition is proof that close exceptional image of an ordinary day, cooperation between curators, art teeming with youthful energy that historians and conservators is critical almost leaps off the page. A gifted to the deeper understanding – and chronicler of eastern European Jewish eventual reassessment – of Picasso’s life, Vishniac was to take thousands work. Already we have learned from of such photographs: glimpses of daily the ghosts revealed through scientific existence soon to be obliterated by the examination that he was even more Holocaust and the cataclysm of the prolific than we thought, and that Second World War. compositional sketches we assumed Vishniac is best known for his had had no outcome led in fact to photographs of the rural communities those buried images. of Eastern European Jewry in the Following various prefatory items 1930s, which were hardly ever visually – including a piquant test, set by documented. He published books on Laurent Le Bon, that consists solely of that vanished world and his images small brushwork details from twenty- were included in one of the most eight unidentified paintings – the popular exhibitions on photography main body of the catalogue is divided ever held, Edward Steichen’s The into year-by-year chapters, each Family of Man, which began its containing an illustrated ‘Journal’, international tour at the Museum brief essays on relevant topics and of Modern Art, New York, in 1955. colour plates. Substantial entries on And yet the current exhibition, the exhibited works are placed, like comprised from thousands of the essays by Jiménez-Garnica and largely unpublished photographs, 156 the burlington magazine | 161 | february 2019 EXHIBITIONS_FEB19.indd 156 17/01/2019 18:38 Exhibitions given by the artist’s daughter to the 22. Jewish St Petersburg, and brought up in well beyond the United States. The International Center of Photography school children, Moscow. They were a wealthy Jewish assignment was specific, to show the Mukacevo, by (ICP) in New York, reconsiders Roman Vishniac. family, his father a manufacturer, his needs of Jewish rural communities Vishniac’s vast legacy through a much c.1935–38. mother from a family of diamond in images to be used for fundraising wider scholarly lens, attesting to how Gelatin silver dealers. Vishniac was something print, 24 by 16.5 without explicitly showing their much there is left to find out about a cm. (© Mara of a prodigy, fascinated as a small accelerating (often invisible) photographer we thought we knew.1 Vishniac Kohn; child by both photography and persecution. The photographs are International Over the course of his long life, Center of biology. He went on to study poetic and memorable, and have Vishniac lived in Russia, Europe and Photography, biology and medicine at Moscow’s imprinted themselves as history. America, and was ultimately both New York; exh. Shanyavsky Institute, which fostered But far from being documentary, Jewish Museum multilingual and multicultural. He London). his ability to observe and organise, recent scholarly examinations of was a remarkable and occasionally while continuing avidly to take Vishniac’s negatives have shown that highly manipulative photographer, photographs. The consequences he often rearranged his imagery – whose work reminds us that of the revolution and increasing editing, cropping, deleting and even photography is never straightforward anti-Semitism in Russia spurred his combining individual photographs documentary; the eye behind the family’s departure to Berlin in 1920, – to show a story he both wished and camera, the mind behind the lens which they later left to find sanctuary was commissioned to tell. In order to and the choices it makes, and the in America, arriving on New Year’s fulfil his assignment, Vishniac tended manipulative possibilities of the Eve in 1940. to focus on the more religious aspects darkroom are all significant. His Vishniac’s well-known images of Jewish life in these villages, as well photo-essays are thus art as much documenting Jewish life in the as their poverty, particularly outside as they are reports, always filtered shtetl and village communities were cities. He journeyed extensively in through the sensibility of the observer. commissioned by the American Jewish Poland, Hungary, Czechoslovakia, the Vishniac was born in his Joint Distribution Committee (1935– Balkans and Romania, photographing family’s dacha in Pavlovsk, outside 1938), an organisation that operated communities from villages to small the burlington magazine | 161 | february 2019 157 EXHIBITIONS_FEB19.indd 157 17/01/2019 18:39 Exhibitions towns, synagogues and schools, street 23. Skin from life and gatherings, moments between Roman Vishniac’s thumb, magnified families and friends, and rural life 280 times, by in the Carpathians. There was little Roman Vishniac. acknowledgement of middle-class 1950s–1970s. Photomicrograph. Jewry or social intermingling. These (© Mara poignant and poetic photographs Vishniac Kohn; International thus show a partial narrative, and are Center of potent in that role. Photography, There is much more to Vishniac’s New York; exh. Jewish Museum sixty-year career as a photographer. London and The His images of street life in Berlin Photographers’ from 1920 to 1938 – some taken Gallery, London). from doorways, looking out at the 24. Boy standing street – are quietly sinister as we on a mountain of rubble, Berlin, by witness the streetscape become ever Roman Vishniac. more branded by the swastika. An 1947. Inkjet print, 30 by extraordinary photograph, People 30 cm. (© Mara behind bars (early 1930s; pl.12), which Vishniac Kohn; depicts from a high vantage point, as International Center of though from the inside, the sterile, Photography, New brick-floored polar bears’ cage in the York; exh. The Berlin zoo, through the bars of which Photographers’ Gallery, London). we see a small crowd of humans. During the war years, which he spent in America, Vishniac turned to portraiture, making portraits of figures including Albert Einstein and Marc Chagall, as well as Fig.24). He photographed the pathos the collaboration of the eye and the documenting the street life and and the hope of Holocaust survivors camera. The exhibitions’ exploration nightclubs of New York. in the seemingly endless displaced of his ceaseless investigations of In the late 1940s Vishniac persons camps in Europe, and Europe in the interwar period, New returned to Berlin to chronicle the the start of journeys to Israel.

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