Photography

Roman Vishniac: Photographer of Life

Monday, June 12
8:00 PM

Despite the fame of Roman Vishniac’s photographic work in pre-Holocaust Europe, he is relatively unknown today in the photography community. His major efforts were not documentary nor artistic, but focused on the biological world.  In this presentation Howard J. Radzyner and Norman Barker will examine the phenomenal scope and quantity of Vishniac’s work over five decades.  
   From zoo animals to the tiniest of microorganisms, from time-lapse studies of vascular physiology to widely distributed biology classroom films, from spreads in Life magazine to advertisements for an insect sting analgesic, Vishniac’s ability to create images — almost exclusively of living subjects — was sought after by scientific researchers, popular magazines, movie producers, news organizations, and commercial entities.
   Vishniac’s body of scientific work, produced in an age before technological advances in imaging, and despite its later eclipse by his own earlier images, was regarded as the finest and most imaginative of its time.
   Howard J. Radzyner is a board-certified scientific and medical photographer based in NYC.  
Norman Barker is Director of the Pathology Photography and Graphics Laboratory as well as Professor of Pathology and Professor of Art as Applied to Medicine at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine.

Photo credit: From Collection of H. Radzyner