In Dr. Roman Vishniac's laboratory in the 11th floor Manhattan apartment, a 14th century Buddha, jaded with age, gazes serenely down from a workbench heavy with microscopes, cameras, biology textbooks, reels of motion-picture film and a short-wave radio tuned to a symphony. In other rooms overlooking Broadway, Chinese tapestries and heavy Samurai swords bedeck walls, and bookcases stand filed with ancient texts, some originally from the libraries of the Medici. Beside them is pinned a drawing by a seven-year-old girl from upstairs with the unequivocal statement of a Vishniac fan: "I love you very much."
Dr. Vishniac, as the evidence suggests, is a man of many enthusiasms. To those who drearily compartmentalize science and art, it may be disquieting to find them so casually combined. But one soon becomes aware that in Vishniac's laboratory, Buddha and the textbook - and children's drawings too - belong together. For in his approach, the scientific and the aesthetic become one.
Vishniac is one of the world's foremost practitioners of the science (or art) of photomicrography. At 68, he is a stocky, robust man with a military carriage, explorer's sparkling eyes and an intellect rich from disciplined exploration in many areas. By training he is a microbiologist, a physician, and a Ph.D. (his thesis was on oriental art history!) He is also a bibliophile, an art connoisseur, a lover of music and a teacher. Along the way he has worked professionally and with distinction as a sociological and a portrait photographer. In every field, the common theme of his work has been the fusion of the artistic and the scientific - the urge to show that beauty and truth are indeed one.
His reaction to the splendors of the microcosmos is typical of his uninhibited zest for Nature. In the tones of an explorer back from another world, he speaks of the miracles he has witnessed: of the mysterious massing of the usually independent amoeba into complex cooperating groups which make awesome marches in search of food; of the radiant beauty of the Dictyostelium - a dowdy mold to the naked eye, but an explosion of color in the microscope's lens. And he will beckon you to the microscope to gaze at the hidden inhabitant of a drop of water - a multi-hued gracefully undulating creature moving lazily, unaware of the scrutiny. "Look!" he says raptly, "a whole universe - a world beyond our imaginings."
His photographs and motion pictures of such scenes have more than an aesthetic value. Vishniac's work has won international acclaim for its uncanny clarity and three-dimensional depth. His mastery of photomicrography has been achieved through a combination of factors. There is his unusual cross-training in sciences. There is his willingness to pioneer - he has built the necessary equipment where none had existed for lighting difficult subjects, and has even developed his own technology for procuring and handling specimens. Above all, there is his unflagging enthusiasm for Nature which often will keep him at his microscope through the night awaiting the denouement to some microscopic drama.
Vishniac has always attempted to show his subjects as they appear in nature. He has made a specialty of picturing protozoa and other microorganisms not dead on a slide (which would be relatively easy) but in swimming, wriggling life.
Photographing capillary blood flow in a hamster - for a Boston University medical School research project - Vishniac found himself working on such a minute scale that he was forced to photograph the tiny capillaries in the rodent's ear each night to provide a "road map" for the next day's operations. He has also recorded such intricacies as the healing action of Nature in repairing a laceration on a tadpole's tail.
At present, Vishniac and his wife Edith who, though not a scientist, is his associate in every phase of his work, are in the midst of a 75-film series sponsored by the National Science Foundation. Titled "Living Biology" and made on Kodachrome and now Kodak Ektachrome Film, the series traces the process of evolution from protozoa to Man. Each begins, characteristically, with the message "This Film is Produced by Nature." With narration edited by a foremost expert in each particular field, it is adaptable to all levels of teaching, from elementary schools to universities. Though his first love is pure science, Vishniac is constantly involved in nonscientific commercial projects which help to pay the bills. Photomicrography can be used as a convincing advertising medium for complex products and Vishniac's searching eye has been used to picture subjects as varied as the action of water softeners, the structures of antibiotics and the bristles of a toothbrush.
His faithfulness to reality shines through another phase of Vishniac's work - his sociological photographic study of Europe's Jewish communities made in 1938 on the eve of the second World War. Using concealed cameras to obtain absolute candor, Vishniac produced photographs of haunting power, many of which have won international acclaim.
But his dogged devotion to reality was a mixed asset during his brief career as a portrait photographer shortly after coming to the U.S. in 1940. Some subjects may have appreciated the whole visual truth, but more sought a romanticized version. One subject who accepted reality was Albert Einstein, whom Vishniac photographed at Princeton in 1941. "He was a perfect subject," says Vishniac fondly. "After a brief conversation, Einstein began to ponder some theoretical question. He disappeared - moved into a higher sphere, you see. He was completely oblivious to my camera!" Later, Einstein said that he liked the Vishniac portrait best of the many made of him.
A lecturer at Yeshiva University, Vishniac delights in encouraging exploration by young minds and he gives a warm welcome to school groups who visit his studio regularly. His blend of scientific knowledgeability and spontaneous enthusiasm make for contagious, exciting teaching, and his passion for the beauty of the real world is communicated easily by the vivid beauty of his photomicrographs. The gasp of awe is as valuable as the scholarly not, he believes, for "feeling is a way of learning too."
"It starts with curiosity," he says. "With amazement at beauty - with awe." He believes that just as man's first curiosity about his place in the universe may have been aroused by the spectacle of a setting sun or an insect's progress, so may a child's awareness of what we call science - microbiology, chemistry and the rest - be triggered by the riotous colors of riboflavin, or the weird dance of the conjugating protozoa seen through a microscope.
"For that is the stuff of science, is it not?" he says happily. "Life. Action. Reality. And it is beautiful!"