Not an Island: Roman Vishniac’s New York Chinatown Photographs

Introduction to the Project & Vishniac bio

In 1943, just before the repeal of the Chinese Exclusion Act, photographer Roman Vishniac visited Manhattan’s Chinatown at least twice. The Roman Vishniac Archive holds 98 negatives depicting his work in Chinatown. Rather than presenting Chinatown as an isolated or insular enclave, these images show a community deeply connected to the surrounding city. Women appear frequently in public and workspaces alongside children and family groups, signaling continuity, care, and long-term settlement. Vishniac also captured moments of interaction between Chinese and non-Chinese residents, suggesting a neighborhood shaped by exchange rather than separation. Seen together, the photographs reveal Manhattan’s Chinatown in the early 1940s as an active social world, one in which people were building lives, relationships, and communities within American urban life, even amid the ongoing realities of exclusion and migration.

Born in 1897 in Saint Petersburg, Roman Vishniac was a Russian-American Jewish photographer best known for his candid documentation of Eastern European Jewish communities on the eve of the Holocaust, as well as for his pioneering work in photomicroscopy and biology. After fleeing to New York City in 1939, Vishniac continued to photograph everyday life and daily routines. Most of his photos from this time period are of Jewish communities in Manhattan, especially of children, and of how people rebuilt their lives.1 This collection of photos in Manhattan’s Chinatown represent an interesting departure from his usual work, revealing what we see as a particular focus on communities shaped by migration and displacement. Notably, Vishniac’s Chinatown photographs were neither published nor exhibited during his lifetime, and no written notes survive to clarify his intent for this series. As a result, the images remain open to interpretation, inviting viewers to engage closely with what they reveal, and with what they leave unsaid.

These photographs were made within a specific historical moment, one shaped by migration, racist exclusion, and political upheaval that defined life in Chinatown at the time. Chinese immigration to the United States accelerated in the mid-nineteenth century, shaped by economic opportunity and political upheaval on both sides of the Pacific. Many Chinese laborers were first drawn to California during the Gold Rush and later recruited for large infrastructure projects such as the Transcontinental Railroad, even as they faced widespread racism and hostility from white workers. In response to escalating violence and exclusion on the West Coast, some Chinese immigrants moved east, settling in Lower Manhattan, where an early Chinese community had already begun to form. As the Manhattan community grew, it snowballed, attracting more immigrants directly from China (as opposed to moving from California first)—particularly from the southern province of Guangdong. Over time, as more people of Chinese descent arrived, residences, businesses, and social institutions took root, giving rise to Manhattan’s Chinatown. This growth unfolded against the backdrop of turmoil in China—including revolution, war, and natural disasters—while restrictive U.S. immigration policies sharply limited movement. 

Racial prejudice across the U.S.—especially from white laborers who felt their jobs were being “taken” by Chinese—reached such a fever pitch that federal legislation was passed to limit the entry of not just immigrants coming from China, but all immigrants of Chinese descent. This was the only immigration act in American history to specify ethnicity rather than nationality. The Chinese Exclusion Act, passed in 1882, barred immigration of nearly all Chinese laborers, making limited exceptions for “exempted classes”: merchants, teachers, students, travelers, ministers, and diplomats. It also required every person of Chinese descent—American citizen or not—to obtain permits and to prove their belonging to one of the exempt classes before traveling abroad. This marked the start of an era named after the act: the Chinese Exclusion Era, characterized by intense racial prejudice, tense relations with China, and very low levels of Chinese immigration. It continued until December of 1943, when the Chinese Exclusion Act was repealed. By the early 1940s, the final years of Exclusion marked a particularly tense moment for Chinese communities abroad, shaped by uncertainty, separation, and political change.

It was within this historical moment that these photographs were made, offering a rare and intimate visual documentation of Manhattan’s Chinatown during wartime. Presented without a guiding narrative from the photographer, these images invite encounter on their own terms. What they offer is not resolution, but proximity—to everyday lives, shared spaces, and fleeting moments that continue to resonate across time. Here, history lingers not as a finished story, but as something still unfolding.

A note on terminology: the term “Chinese American” did not become commonly used as a self-identifier until the 60s and 70s. As such, throughout this exhibition we will refer to the people of Manhattan’s Chinatown during this time how they referred to themselves, as “Chinese in America”.

Chinese Language Class

These photographs were taken together during a Chinese language class session held at the Manhattan offices of the American Women’s Voluntary Services (AWVS), the largest women’s service organization in the U.S. during World War II. The AWVS hosted events related to wartime preparedness, such as first aid training, and coordinated with various community organizations. The Chinese language class was organized by the Chinese Women’s New Life Movement, which collaborated with the AWVS in war relief activities and community programming. Promoted by Chinese Nationalist supporters abroad, the Chinese New Life Movement was the Chinese in America extension of a cultural reform campaign launched by Chiang Kai-shek’s Nationalist government in the 1930s. Vishniac’s photographs show students of a variety of ages and ethnicities attending the class, from young Chinese girls to elderly white men, indicating a pluralistic environment for learning. These images demonstrate how the classroom functioned as a space where language learning, political engagement, and community life converged, highlighting the active role women played in the public sphere and broader wartime interests, among both Chinese and non-Chinese participants, in Chinese language and culture. 

Photos: 12_026_007, 12_023_006, 12_027_003, 12_027_004, 12_027_002, 12_027_001, 12_027_007, 12_027_005, 12_026_005, 12_027_006, 12_026_006

Women in Politics

This set of photographs tells a story of women in Manhattan’s Chinatown as active political leaders and participators in their community, taking initiative to shape the political conditions of their world. These images specifically show some of the wartime initiatives that women in Chinatown undertook in 1943, but they hint at larger political engagement beyond this one moment. Drawing on the pioneering scholarship of Hua Liang that revealed the extensive activism of Chinese women in New York, these photographs challenge the long-standing characterization of Manhattan’s Chinatown as a “bachelors’ town” by foregrounding the sustained activism of Chinese women in America during WWII. Organizations such as the Chinese Women’s New Life Association led fundraising drives, organized educational and community-building programs, and mobilized support for relief and Nationalist causes in China. During the Second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945), women’s activism in Manhattan’s Chinatown intensified, crossing generational, geographical and racial boundaries to conduct war relief activities supporting both Chinese and U.S. war efforts. These local actions connect with a larger international story of Chinese diaspora communities abroad providing support for their homeland. The images presented here situate women not at the margins of community life, but at the forefront of civic and patriotic action, occupying public space through organizing, teaching, fundraising, and institution-building.

AWVS Office

One of the main locations in which this story of women in Manhattan’s Chinatown as active political leaders in their community took place is within the Manhattan offices of the American Women’s Voluntary Services. During WWII, the offices were used as the headquarters of the Chinese Women’s New Life Movement. The space functioned as a hub for language instruction, first-aid training, community organizing, and war-related programming. Such initiatives were part of a broader wave of social and patriotic activism that had existed since the early 1900s, but that intensified between 1931 and 1945 as Japanese invasion and occupation in China reshaped political commitments across the Chinese diaspora. As Liang notes, young China-born and America-born women of Chinese descent were visible leaders in these efforts, crossing racial lines and expressing dual commitments to both China and the U.S.. The AWVS office thus appears not merely as a classroom or meeting room, but as a political site where civic participation, gendered leadership, and wartime mobilization converged.

Photos: 12_031_002, 12_031_007, 12_031_008, 12_031_009, 12_031_010, 12_029_002

Blood Bank

Another location where women in Manhattan’s Chinatown were active political participants in their community is in the New York Chinese Blood Bank, the first Chinese blood bank ever established. This set of photographs provides an intimate view inside the blood bank of Betty Bough Chun Eng Allen donating blood. It was opened in July 1943 to aid both American and Chinese war efforts during WWII, collecting blood in New York that was later shipped to China as plasma. Between July 1943 and January 1944, it collected blood for 1,757 soldiers. Chinese women in America played an active role in the success of the blood bank, both in giving blood and in encouraging others to give. Vishniac’s photos of the AWVS offices show Chinese language posters advertising the New York Chinese Blood Bank and encouraging community members to donate blood. The New York Chinese Blood Bank additionally also relied on cross-racial collaboration. It was formed by Chinese immigrants and sympathetic white Americans together, and actively appealed to minority communities excluded by mainstream blood banks. African Americans, Japanese Americans, white Americans, and Chinese in America participated for different political and civic reasons, making the blood bank a site of wartime alliance across racial and national lines.

Photos: 12_024_005, 12_024_006, 12_024_008, 12_026_008, 12_026_009, 12_026_011

Funeral Procession

This grouping centers on a funeral procession honoring a Chinese U.S. Navy sailor on Mott Street, which had emerged as Chinatown’s unofficial “Main Street” by the 1890s and remains so to this day. During WWII, many Chinese in America served in the U.S. military, while also maintaining strong ties to China, which was fighting against Japan. Like other minority communities, their wartime service contributed to shifting public perceptions and political pressures. The procession depicted here includes a mix of American and Chinese funerary traditions; the formal black attire of mourners and the flower-adorned casket reflect American military customs, while the presence of wanlian (挽聯)—long strips of white paper inscribed with calligraphic tributes—draws from Chinese mourning practices. Together, these elements reveal how public ritual became a space where overlapping identities, loyalties, and cultural traditions were visibly negotiated. The procession also includes women and children publicly present among mourners, as well as white and Chinese men in uniforms, showing strong communal organization and an involvement of non-Chinese people within the Chinese community. 

Photos: 12_022_005, 12_022_008, 12_022_007, 12_022_006, 12_022_001, 12_022_003, 12_025_002, 12_030_009, 12_030_010

Outside the Home

This grouping brings together images of everyday life unfolding in public space, where women, men, and children appear out and about, walking, resting, and gathering in the streets of Chinatown. While elite Confucian ideals historically emphasized the separation of women from public life, such norms were never universal and were shaped by class, labor, and historical circumstance. The photographs here complicate any assumption of strict gendered boundaries. Women are visibly present, caring for children and moving through the neighborhood, and at times attending to their own bodies, including moments of outdoor exercise. Traditional forms of dress, including zhongshan suits (中山装) and qipao (旗袍), situate these scenes within specific cultural frameworks, while their everyday use points to adaptation rather than adherence to fixed tradition. Together, these images foreground public space as a shared site where gender, culture, and daily life were actively negotiated.

Photos: 12_029_011, 12_029_012, 13_003_006, 13_003_005, 12_029_001, 12_031_003, 12_031_005

In the Workplace

This set of photographs examines labor and professional life in Manhattan’s Chinatown during the early 1940s. While people of Chinese descent in the U.S. were historically confined to a narrow range of service occupations due to racism and exclusionary labor practices, the photographs in this section reveal a more varied landscape of work. These groupings complicate the assumption that Chinese in America were limited solely to marginal or informal labor, highlighting both constraint and adaptation within the structures of American economic life.

Laundries and Restaurants

Laundries and restaurants were among the most common occupations available to Chinese immigrants in New York during the early twentieth century, shaped by racial exclusion and limited access to other sectors of employment. By the 1930s and 1940s, a significant majority of Chinese workers in New York were engaged in these industries. The photographs in this grouping, however, do not definitively identify the individuals’ occupational status. Instead, they depict a woman in two locations: engaged in sewing and seated in a restaurant. These images do not confirm whether the subject was employed in the laundry or restaurant trades. Rather than serving as documentary proof of occupation, the photographs situate women within the material and social environments shaped by these industries, highlighting how work, maintenance, and consumption intersect in daily experience.

Photos: 12_024_001, 12_024_003, 12_024_004

Actress and Aviator

This grouping features Li Xia Qing (李霞卿), anglicized as Lee Ya-Ching and also known by her stage name Li Dan Dan (李旦旦), posing in her home. Dressed in a qipao (旗袍), Li was a prominent film actress and became the first woman to receive a civil aviation license in China. During WWII, she toured the U.S. to raise funds for China’s war effort and to promote U.S.-China friendship. Her presence in this exhibition situates Chinatown within a broader transnational network of cultural diplomacy, celebrity, and political advocacy, expanding the definition of “work” beyond wage labor to include performance, aviation, and wartime mobilization.

Photos: 12_026_002, 12_026_003, 12_025_010, 12_025_008, 12_025_009

Draftsmanship

This grouping shows at least four Chinese men copying plans from blueprints and producing close-up, detailed technical drawings. The tools and settings suggest drafting work within a professional office environment. These images document skilled technical labor that contrasts with the service occupations most often associated with Chinese employment in the U.S. in the early twentieth century.

Photos: 12_028_008, 12_028_010, 12_028_007, 12_028_009

Community Banking

This grouping includes several photos taken within Manhattan’s Bank of China, the official Nationalist Chinese bank in Chinatown during the 1940s and one of only two banks in the neighborhood at the time. The bank primarily handled remittances—funds sent by Chinese in America to family members in China—and was at the time the only bank authorized by the U.S. government to send remittances to enemy-occupied areas within China. This special designation likely made it extremely important to the residents of Manhattan’s Chinatown sending back money to support their families, and to China’s wartime economy, of which remittances from the U.S. were a significant part. The photographs show both men and women, and individuals of Chinese and European descent, employed within the bank, underscoring its role as both a financial and transnational institution linking Chinatown to global political developments

Photos: 12_029_006, 12_030_006, 12_030_007, 12_030_004, 12_030_005, 12_029_005, 12_028_006, 12_028_004, 12_029_004, 12_028_002, 12_028_001

Office work

This grouping depicts men and women, Chinese and white, working together in an office setting on tasks involving telephones, ledgers, and paperwork. Historically, Chinese in America were largely excluded from professional employment alongside non-Chinese workers, particularly in white-collar environments. While the specific nature of the work depicted here could not be definitively identified, the images document a setting in which Chinese and non-Chinese employees appear to share workspace and administrative responsibilities. Seen alongside the service industries that dominated Chinese employment statistics, these photographs complicate prevailing assumptions about occupational segregation and suggest participation in forms of clerical and institutional labor not typically associated with Chinatown’s economic history.

Photos: 12_025_005, 12_025_006, 12_025_007, 12_029_009, 12_030_003, 12_030_001, 12_023_001, 12_024_011, 12_024_010, 12_024_009

Undergraduate Research Apprentices

Lavender Peng Liu is a researcher and artist working at the intersection of art history and visual culture. She received her M.A. from the University of Chicago and her B.A. from the University of California, Berkeley, and studies everyday photography in Mao-era and post-Mao China. Her research explores how images gain meaning through circulation, memory, and social relations, and her artistic work spans photography, ceramics, and multimedia, focusing on personal emotions within social contexts. In this exhibition, she has worked in close collaboration with her research partner Anya since September 2023, contributing to metadata organization, archival research, writing and translating descriptions, and the final presentation of the exhibition.

Anya Lassila is a recent graduate from the University of California, Berkeley class of 2025 with a degree in Global Studies. Their major included a concentration in Societies and Cultures and an area focus in Asia, reflecting their enduring interest in the intersection of global identities in diaspora. Anya brought these interests to their research on the Vishniac Chinatown photos, drawing on knowledge and passion from their Jewish identity and their cultural background having grown up in China. They also conducted political and advocacy-focused research with the UC Berkeley Disability Lab to assess student needs and push for policy change. For this exhibition, they have worked in close collaboration with their research partner Lavender since September 2023, contributing to metadata organization, archival research, writing and proofreading descriptions, and the final presentation of the exhibition.

Additional Resources

Saved by The Bay Exhibition Page

Saved by The Bay Exhibition Catalog

Saved by The Bay Exhibition Brochure

Saved by The Bay Scholar Biographies

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.

1) From observation of archives of Vishinac’s photos from this period in his life kept at The Magnes Collection.