Vishniac, Roman

Russia 1940
photographer, biologist, linguist, art historian and philosopher
 

A photographer, biologist, linguist, art historian and philosopher, Vishniac is known for his haunting photographs of shtetl life taken in the 1930s, and collected in Children of a Vanished World. During the same time, he was imprisoned in concentration camps on eleven separate occasions. Finally he escaped to the United States, where he taught in several fields at different universities, and practiced photomicroscopy (photographing living organisms). His descendants have been successful in the United States as artists and scientists.