The 1938 Campaign of the Greater New York Jewish Joint Distribution Committee featured a cropped version of Vishniac’s iconic image of Sara, a young Jewish girl in a basement dwelling, on its letterhead (an uncropped print of this image is on view in this room). The use of the photograph as the “face” of the JDC’s efforts to raise funds for eastern European Jews that year, while Vishniac was still working on assignment for the organization in eastern Europe, provides a vivid example of its strategic use of photographs as they were being commissioned.

For all uses of photographs by Roman Vishniac contact ICP at: vishniac_archive@icp.org.