page_title: Alter Kacyzne
section_title: Photography
hierarchical_section_title: Alter Kacyzne / Photography
caption_attribution_description: English: 'Giving a hint'. Children learning Hebrew by sounding out the words in prayer books. Lubli, Poland, 1924.
context_page_description: Alter Kacyzne was a Jewish writer, poet and photographer. One of the most significant contributors to Jewish-Polish cultural life in the first half of the 20th century. Among other things, he is particularly known as a photographer whose work immortalised Jewish life in Poland in the 1920s and 1930s.
context_section_description: Arriving in Warsaw in 1910, Kacyzne opened his own photography studio. Originally it was located on Długa street; the address changed several times. Kacyzne worked at portraits, shooting memorable events (weddings, bar mitzvah), and soon became a well-known photographer. The turning point in his professional career as a photographer began in 1921, when he was commissioned by a charitable organisation based in the United States of America the Hebrew Immigrant Aid Society (HIAS) to make a series of images dedicated to the life of Jews in Polish cities and towns, including the eastern lands that were part of the territory of Poland – Galicia and Volyn (Kacyzne travelled to more than 120 Polish settlements).  These images so impressed Abraham Cahan, Chief Editor of the New York newspaper Forward, that he suggested that Kacyzne document Jewish life in Poland for readers.
  Kacyzne's precious historical collection was almost entirely destroyed during the Nazi occupation; only a selection of 700 photographs survived. After the Holocaust, the imagery acquired not only artistic but also historical value, documenting the pre-war life of the Polish Jewish community. These photographs, which are an important part of Kacyzne's work, are now kept in the YIVO Archive (Institute for Jewish Research) in Manhattan and in the Bibliothèque Medem of Paris.
caption: The Cheder (School). Lublin. 1924
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