Lisette Model

Lisette Model (born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern; November 10, 1901 – March 30, 1983) was an Austrian-born American photographer primarily known for the frank humanism of her street photography.

A prolific photographer in the 1940s and a member of the New-York cooperative Photo League, she was published in PM's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, and US Camera before taking up teaching in 1949 through the intermediary of Ansel Adams. She continued to photograph and taught at the New School for Social Research in New York from 1951 until her death in 1983 with many notable students, the most famous of whom was Diane Arbus. Her work has been shown in numerous exhibitions and resides in several permanent collections, including that of the National Gallery of Canada, the J. Paul Getty Museum, and the National Portrait Gallery.

Early life and education

Lisette Model was born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern in the family home in the 8th district of Vienna, Austria-Hungary. ) Arnold Schoenberg, and was familiar to members of his circle. "If ever in my life I had one teacher and one great influence, it was Schoenberg", she said. There is little known about her art education, but her connection with Schoenberg exposed her to the contemporary art scene and leading avant-garde artists such as Gustav Klimt. expanding her practice.

Her decision to become a professional photographer came from a conversation in late 1933 or early 1934 with a fellow Viennese émigré and former student of Schoenberg, Hanns Eisler (who had previously fled Germany once Hitler came into power). Additionally, her use of a inch square negative and larger print size were stylistic choices considered unique at a time when a proliferation of street photographers were embracing what was called the miniature camera (35 mm film camera). Later examination of her negatives by archivists reveals that the uncropped images include much of the subjects' physical surroundings. Model's edits in the darkroom eliminate those distractions, tightening the focus on the person and excluding extraneous background information. She was captivated by the energy of New York City, which she expressed through her separate series Reflections and Running Legs. Interested in American consumerism and a culture very different from her own, Model began photographing Reflections, a series that explored manufactured images, and products or consumers in window reflections. She was recognized for her radical deviation from traditional viewpoint, and preoccupation with notions of glamour and anti-glamour. member of the New York Photo League and studied with Sid Grossman. Despite the League's effort to maintain that it was a cultural, photographic organization, political pressure led to the League's demise in 1951. From 1941 to 1953, she was a freelance photographer and contributed to many publications including Harper's Bazaar, Look, and Ladies' Home Journal.

Model's involvement with the New York Photo League became the cause of much strife for her during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when the organization came under scrutiny by the House Un-American Activities Committee for suspected connections to the Communist Party. Though the League was not officially a political organization, many of its members used photography as a means for social awareness and change, but Model herself did not identity as a political or documentary photographer. Larry Fink, Helen Gee, John Gossage, Harry Lapow, Charles Pratt, Eva Rubinstein and Rosalind Solomon were also students of Model's. For twenty years she taught the program with little variation and routinely followed the same principles.

In 1964, Model once again applied for the Guggenheim Fellowship, and in 1965 she was awarded the fellowship of $5,000 for a period of one year. In 1966 she went to Los Angeles and Las Vegas, with the intention to photograph anti-glamour of American culture. She also went to photograph in Italy, but due to ill health she returned to New York earlier than anticipated, and was diagnosed and successfully treated for uterine cancer.

In early 1970 she applied to the Ingram Merrill Foundation and was awarded $2,500, and in March 1973 she received a Creative Artists Public Service Program award for $2,500.

In January 1976, Evsa suffered a heart attack, which required constant care and monitoring. His health continued to decline until his death later that same year. His death deeply affected Lisette, who continued to live in the basement apartment they had shared for many years.

The estate of Lisette Model is represented by Bruce Silverstein Gallery, New York, New York. This estate was responsible for the release of a mass of information on the notoriously private Model after her death, including 25,000 negatives (many hundreds unprinted), personal letters, lectures, press clippings, and many more sources. The release of this information made up for the previous dearth of accurate details on Model's life, which could be partially attributed to her mistrust of written publications. She refused the release of interviews, and allegedly even sabotaged a manuscript about her by Phillip Lopate. It is suspected that she may have fudged the truth about her past more than once, and her reticence to release information may have been due to a fear of revealing this misinformation and unclouding her personal history. Regardless, there is a wealth of knowledge to be found, thanks to the meticulous preservation of her estate.

Awards Guggenheim Fellowship, 1965 American Association of Magazine Photographers Honorary Membership, 1968 Creative Artists Public Service Program Award, 1973 New School of Social Research Honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts, 1981 Medal of the City of Paris, 1982

Exhibitions and collections 1940 "Sixty Photographs: A Survey of Camera Esthetics" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1941 "Lisette Model" – Photo League, New York, NY 1943 "Action Photography" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, "Photographs by Lisette Model" – Art Institute of Chicago 1944 "New Yorkers" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, "Art in Progress" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1946 "The Museum Collection of Photography" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1948 "A Survey of Today's Photography" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, "Fifty Photographs by Fifty Photographers" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1949 "Leading Photographers: Lisette Model" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1951 "Twelve Photographers" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1953 "Contemporary American Photography" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1954 "Great Photographers" – Limelight Gallery, New York, NY 1955 "The Family of Man" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1957 "70 Photographers Look at New York" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1958 "Photographs from the Museum Collection" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1960 "A Bid for Space" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1963 "A Bid for Space" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY 1965 "Invitational Exhibition, 10 American Photographers" – University of Wisconsin, Milwaukee 1967 "Photography in the 20th Century" – National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada 1969 "The Camera and the Human Facade" – Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. 1970 "The People Yes" – Floating Foundation of Photography, New York, NY 1972 "Brodovitch and His Influence" – Philadelphia College of Art, Philadelphia, PA 1973 "Threads and No Threads" – Floating Foundation of Photography, New York, NY 1974 "American Masters" – Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C. 1975 "Women of Photography: An Historical Survey" – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA 1976 "The Photographer and the Artist" – Sidney Janis Gallery, New York, NY, "Lisette Model Photographs" – Sander Gallery, Washington D.C. 1977 "New York: the City and Its People" – A and A Gallery, Yale, New Haven, CN, "Appearances" – Marlborough Gallery, New York, NY, "Three-Woman Show: Diane Arbus, Lisette Model, Rosalind Solomon" – Galerie Zabriskie, Paris, France, "Photographs from the Collection of the Center for Creative Photography" – Center for Creative Photography, Carmel, CA, "Photographs from the Collection #1: America" – Philadelphia Museum of Art, Philadelphia, PA 1978 "New Standpoints: Photography 1940–1955" – Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY, "Photographic Crossroads: The Photo League" – National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada, "The Quality of Presence" – Lunn Gallery, Washington D.C., "How Photography Clicked" – Floating Foundation of Photography, New York, NY 1978, Rencontres de la photographie, Arles, France 1979 Monograph published by Aperture, "Lisette Model: Photographs" – Vision Gallery, Boston, MA, "August Sander, Lisette Model" – Port Washington Public Library, Port Washington, NY 1980 Watari Gallery, Tokyo, Japan, Photographers Gallery, South Yarra, Australia, Ikona Gallery, Venice, Italy, "The Magical Eye: Definitions of Photography" – National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada 1981, PPS Gallery, Hamburg, Germany, "Carl Siembab: A Photographic Patron" – Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, MA, "Photography of the Fifties: An American Perspective" – Center for Creative Photography, Carmel, CA, "Lisette Model" – Galerie Viviane Esders, Paris, France, "Lisette Model: A Retrospective" – New Orleans Museum of Art, New Orleans, LA 1982 "Lisette Model" – Berner-Photo Galerie, Bern, Switzerland, "Lisette Model, A Retrospective" – Museum Folkwang, Essen, Germany 1983 "Weegee, Lisette Model, Diane Arbus" – Comfort Gallery, Haverford, PA, "Lisette Model: A Celebration of Genius" – Parsons Exhibition Center, New York, NY, "Lisette Model" – Sander Gallery, New York, NY 1984 "Lisette Model/Evsa Model" – Ikona Gallery, Venice, Italy, "Lisette Model" – Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto, Canada 1985 "The New York School Photographs: Part One" – Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., "The New York School Photographs: Part Two" – Corcoran Gallery of Art, Washington D.C., "Masters of the Street II" – Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA 1987 "Vintage Women" – Photocollect, New York, NY 1988 "Lisette Model: Vintage Photographs" – Germans Van Eck Gallery, New York, NY 1989 "Noted Women Photographers of the 20s and 30s" – Jan Kesner Gallery, Los Angeles, CA, "New York: Photography between the Wars" – Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY 1990 "Lisette Model" – National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada 1991 "Lisette Model" – San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA 1991 "Lisette Model" – International Center of Photography, New York, NY 1991 "Lisette Model: Daring to See" – The J. Paul Getty Museum, Malibu, CA 1992 "Lisette Model: Photographien, 1933–1983" – Museum Ludwig, Cologne, Germany 1997 "Lisette Model: Selections from the Collection of the International Center of Photography" – Paine Webber Art Gallery, New York, NY 2000 "Lisette Model" – Kunsthalle Wien, Vienna, Austria 2001 "Lisette Model" – Fotomuseum Winterthur, Zurich, Switzerland 2002 "Lisette Model" – Baudoin Lebon Gallery, Paris, France, "Lisette Model" – L'Espace 14–16 Verneuil, Paris, France 2003 "Lisette Model" – Maurice Keitelman, Paris, France"A Clear Vision: Photographic Works from the F. C. Gundlach Collection" – International House of Photography, Hamburg, Germany 2006 "The Streets of New York: American Photographs from the Collection, 1938–1958" – National Gallery of Art, Washington D.C. 2007 "Lisette Model and Her Successors" – Aperture Gallery, New York, NY 2008 "Lisette Model & Her Successors" – Galleria Carla Sozzani, Milan, Italy 2010 "Lisette Model" – The Galerie nationale du Jeu de Paume, Paris, France 2020 "Photography and the Surreal Imagination" - The Menil Collection, Houston, TX 2025-26 "Lisette Model: Retrospective" - Albertina Museum, Vienna, Austria

Permanent collections Academy Art Museum, Easton, MD Albertina, Vienna, Austria The Center for Creative Photography, Tucson, AZ Centre Pompidou, Paris, France Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH George Eastman House, Rochester, NY Getty Museum, Los Angeles, CA The Jewish Museum, New York, NY Kemper Museum of Contemporary Art, Kansas City, MO Los Angeles County Museum of Art, Los Angeles, CA The Menil Collection, Houston, TX Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York, NY Milwaukee Art Museum, Milwaukee, WI Museum of Modern Art, New York, NY The Museum of Photographic Arts, San Diego, CA The National Gallery of Australia, Canberra, Australia The National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa, Canada de Saisset Museum, Santa Clara, CA San Francisco Museum of Modern Art, San Francisco, CA Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington D.C. Spencer Museum of Art, Lawrence KS Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, NY

Publications "Lisette Model: Photographs by Lisette Model", foreword by Berenice Abbott, published in 1979 by Aperture Foundation and reissued in 2008 for the twenty-fifth anniversary of Model's death. "Lisette Model" by Ann Thomas, published in 1990 by the National Gallery of Canada to accompany a comprehensive retrospective exhibition of Model's work.