Lisette Model example essay topic
443 words
Lisette Model was a modernist photographer and is best known for her portraiture photography. She is identified by her unique compositions and for exposing the reality of her subjects whilst capturing historic images of Vienna and Paris culture. Lisette Model was born into a wealthy Viennese family where her Italian / Austrian Jewish father was a well-off doctor, her mother a French Catholic. Consequently her education was an international one. By travelling a lot she learnt three different languages and was tutored privately. After the death of her father Model moved to Paris to study voice with a well-known polish soprano. As her fate has it Model gave up her music career around 1933 and studied art. The following year whilst visiting her mother in Nice, Model photographed people on the Promenade and made a series of close up portraits of the rich, lounging in deck chairs which would become a significant chapter of her life's work. Model learnt very early on in her photographic career, "Never take a picture of anything you are not passionately interested in".
Model married a Jewish artist Evs a Model in 1937, and immigrated to Manhattan. Models work was first published in the United States in the late 1940's in a magazine called Cue, her second published mention was in P. M Magazine sited under the title "Why France Fell", to Models disapproval. Model became a member of the 'photo Lounge' where she had her first one-person show in 1941 followed by another one-person shows at the Chicago Art Institute and the San Francisco Palace of the Legion of Honour. With the support of her fellow artists and directors, Model had a one-person travelling show of her pictures from 1941 to 1953.
Model was well known for her fashion photography as her images were regularly published in magazines such as Harpers Bazaar, Ladies Home Journal, Vogue, The Saturday Evening Post, Popular Photography, U. S Camera, and Cosmopolitan. Model was invited to teach at the New School for Social Research, where Berenice Abbott, a long-standing friend was also a photography teacher. Model was recognised as an exceptional teacher with students such as Dianne Arbus who joined her class in 1957. 'Arbus's work shows many similarities to that of Model.
' A technique that Arbus used is seen in earlier works of Model's. This technique or style was to take photographs of societies minority, such as dwarfs, transvestites, etc this could have only been done with the subject trusting the photographer. Model continued to teach until her death in 1983.
