Prompted by the spread of anti-Semitism
and the rise of Hitler and the Third Reich, the scientist and self-taught
photographer Roman Vishniac documented Eastern European Jewish communities from
1936 to 1939, just prior to the devastation of the Holocaust. Considered an
alarmist, Vishniac nevertheless made several journeys into Eastern European
ghettos at great personal risk. "I knew I could be of little help, but l
decided as a Jew, it was my duty to my ancestors, who grew up among the very people
who were being threatened, to preserve-in pictures, at least a world that might
soon cease to exist."

Vishniac sometimes disguised himself
as a Nazi in order to travel freely through Bratislava, Mukachevo, the Carpathians,
Warsaw, Lublin, Vilna, and Cracow. Vishniac concealed his camera under his
coat, still managing to take over 16,000 photographs. The intimacy and
spontaneity of his photographs poignantly realize Vishniac's desire to
"save the faces." All but 2,000 of Vishniac's photographs were
confiscated, but the surviving negatives, hidden with various people throughout
the war, remain as a pictorial testimony to the people, cultures, and places
forever erased.

Among Vishniac's many achievements
are prize-winning color microphotographs of marine life and insects, and the
invention of time-lapse cinematography in 1915.