Clemens Kalischer
Clemens Kalischer was born in Bavaria, Germany, and immigrated to the United States in 1942. His photographs appeared in The New York Times, Newsweek, and Time. He died in 2018 at the age of ninety-seven.
Displaced Persons
After World War II Congress voted to allow thousands of European war refugees into the U.S. Whenever a ship carrying these “displaced persons,” as they were called, came into New York City, Kalischer would go to the harbor to take pictures of the new arrivals. He had come here as a refugee himself not long before, at the age of twenty-one, and he recognized the fear and expectation in the faces of the men, women, and children.
October 2018The Work Of Clemens Kalischer
Born in Germany in 1921, Clemens Kalischer arrived in the United States at the age of twenty-one, a Jewish immigrant who’d narrowly survived the Holocaust. He had no money and spoke no English. One of his few possessions was a book of photographs by Hungarian Jewish photographer André Kertész. Titled Paris Vu Par, it was filled with iconic images of the city.
June 2014Artists At Work
Kalischer documented the arrival of Holocaust refugees to the U.S. in the late 1940s, and over the next several decades he traveled throughout Europe and the U.S. capturing everyday scenes from people’s lives. The images on these pages depict art students and artists in New England and New York from the 1950s through the 1980s.
March 2010Photographs By Clemens Kalischer
Three years after the end of World War II, thousands of people remained stranded in European displaced-persons camps. Some sought and gained asylum in the United States, where they hoped to start a new life. Having recently taken a beginners’ class in photography, Clemens Kalischer was drawn to the New York City waterfront to record the arrival of the displaced persons.
February 1998
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