The International Center of Photography (ICP) and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum have announced a joint project to make photographer Roman Vishniac’s vast archive available to the public and researchers. Together they developed an innovative digital database to facilitate unprecedented access to the archive, which includes 40,000 objects and spans more than six decades. Vishniac created some of the most enduring images of eastern European Jews immediately before the Holocaust and later pioneered techniques in photo microscopy.

This collaboration represents a unique model for the future of archives and information sharing between institutions with wide-ranging missions. The database, which is accessible to the public at vishniac.icp.org, already includes all of Vishniac’s 9,000 negatives – most of which have never before been printed or published. Additional materials – including prints, contact sheets, films, correspondence, interviews, recordings, and ephemera – are being added every day.

Information on the project and new details uncovered about some of Vishniac’s most iconic images are available at ushmm.org/vishniac.

A traveling exhibition Roman Vishniac Rediscovered will be on tour through the end of 2016. For a full schedule of current and upcoming venues, please visit vishniac.icp.org/traveling-exhibition.

Also see “Roman Vishniac (Re)Discovered in Amsterdam” (on Stephen Donshik’s visit to the exhibit last month).