One Room Apartment-Workshop, Warsaw

Description

Front: Black and white photograph of a man doing metal work on a log with a child standing behind him, looking at the camera. There are two beds behind them, and a mirror.

Back: Four white stickers with various messages.

Photograph from Roman Vishiac's The Vanished World. Vishniac photographed the shtetl Jews of Eastern Europe, from 1933 to 1940, just before the Holocaust was to destroy their communities. "The basement was divided by wood boards into twenty-six living quarters. This apartment was the most expensive because a little light came from above. But when the pedestrians walked on the pavement grating even this room became dark. This man was working the whole day. The work made it impossible to breathe because metal dust was everywhere." Roman Vishniac, 1977.