Vishniac And The Rise Of Anti-Semitism

The Pittsburgh massacre has many of us thinking about the virulence of anti-Semitism. Its most hate-filled period, the 1930s and 1940s, were captured by Roman Vishniac. He photographed most heavily Berlin, as swastikas began to creep on to the streets. The Guardian tells us: ‘Vishniac’s photographs of everyday Berlin in the early 30s are a rare portrait of a society in which ordinary life is giving way to a kind of normalized extremism in the lead-up to Nazi rule. They are one of the many revelations in an exhibition curated by American photography scholar Maya Benton, that is spread across two London spaces: the Photographers’ Gallery and the Jewish Museum.’

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