20th Century Stories: Contextualizing Roman Vishniac's Photography Archive (Fall 2025 – Spring 2026)
Achinoam Aldouby, Curator
Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life
Applications for Fall 2025 are closed for this project.
This is an archival research project focused on the photography archive of Roman Vishniac, documenting pre-WWII Jewish communities in Europe and American society. The project goal is to identify, contextualize, and create curatorial descriptions for the images, building a searchable database to provide historical context for future research.
Role: Students will gain hands-on experience in archival research, including:
Identifying and grouping photo series, Conducting bibliographic research on individuals, communities, and organizations, Synthesizing information to write historical narratives.
Tasks will involve consolidating information, meticulous database entry of sources and writing series descriptions. Students will develop skills in information synthesis, data management, and ethical research practices.
Qualifications: Ideal candidates are curious, independent, and detail-oriented with strong organizational skills. Must be comfortable working with Google Sheets. Interested in History, Art, data science and/or archival work. Basic-level knowledge of Eastern European languages or Yiddish can be helpful, but is not required.
Day-to-day supervisor for this project: Achinoam Aldouby, Associate Curator
Hours: 3-5 hrs
Related website: https://https://magnes.berkeley.edu/
Related website: https://https://magnes.berkeley.edu/collections/museum/jewish-art/vishniac/