Besprizornii, Lublin, Poland

Commissioned by the Joint Distribution Committee, a Jewish relief organization based in the United States, Vishniac traveled throughout Eastern Europe from about 1935 to 1938, photographing daily life in Jewish communities. Focusing on the impoverished and malnourished, Vishniac created images that were meant as incentives for donations, but later served as a selective, nostalgic representation of the Old World Jewry who were decimated by Hitler’s holocaust during World War II. Children were often the focus of Vishniac’s photos, as they were a natural subject to elicit sympathy. In this way, many of Vishniac’s photos from the shtetls mirror those of contemporary American photographers—Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange, and John Vachon—who worked under the Farm Security Administration to document the living conditions of farmers in rural America.