Arena

Season 1, Episode 105

Episode Title: On Photography

Air Date: 1979-01-15

Overview:

Featuring two of the greatest photographers of the 20th century Jacques Henri Lartigue began taking photographs at the age of seven in 1902. His celebrated Diary of a Century is a photographic record of his life from that time until the present day. This entrancing autobiography is a unique reflection of the passage of this century. 'Photography is a magic thing! Almost more enchanting and clear than the reality I was staring at.' Roman Vishniac a Russian Jew born in St Petersburg in 1897. His striking images of life in the Jewish ghettos-taken with a concealed camera just before the last world war-are extraordinary documents of a lost epoch, of a lost people. ' I returned again and again because I wanted to save their faces from the devastation of Hitler's Germany.'