Model smoothing iron

Lisette Model (November 10th 1901 with Wien - March 30th 1983 with New York) is a American Photographe born in Austria.

Youth and studies

Born Elects Amelie Felicie Stern with Wien, of a father italo-Austrian, doctor of Jewish ascent , with the service of the Austrian imperial army then of the Red Cross and of a French mother and Catholique, religion in which Elise will be baptized. Two years after its birth, his/her parents change their family name for Seybert.

At the 19 years age, it starts to study the music with the type-setter Arnold Schönberg, it will say later:

If a professor had a great influence in my life, it was without any doubt Schönberg.

It leaves Vienna for Paris, after the death of her father in 1924, to study the song with the soprano there Polish Marya Freund. It is at that time that it meets her engaged couple, the French painter, of Russian origin, Evsa Model. In 1933, it gives up the music and launches out in the study of visual arts, initially studying painting with André Lhote (which among its students counts Henri Cartier-Bresson and George Hoyningen-Huene). It is also initiated with photography, learning the basic techniques from the darkroom thanks to her younger sister Olga Seybert (who is it even a professional photograph), however it is the portraitist Rogi André who gives him the bases of the techniques of catch of sight.

Returning visit with his/her mother with Nice, in 1934 (it and Olga had left Vienna for Nice a few years earlier), Model goes with its camera on the Promenade of the English, where it carries out a series of portraits which will become its most reproduced and exposed works. These portraits, finely tallied and often clandestine, of the local leading class, precede already the EC what will be its style: closed-up, the nonsentimental ones and without final improvement, showing vanity, the insecurity and loneliness.

The United States

She marries Evsa Model in 1937 and the following year they emigrate with the the United States to join the sister of her husband with Manhattan. Over there it becomes a professional photograph, its works are regularly published in Harper' S Bazaar by Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch. She becomes also member of the New York Photo League , which will organize its first exposure. It is in 1940, that the Museum off Modern Art of New York buys its first photographs, then, in 1948, exposes its works with those of Bill Brandt, Harry Callahan and Ted Croner.

In 1951, Model is invited to teach with the New School for Social Research in New York, where his/her friend Berenice Abbott sign also photography. One of the most famous pupils of Model will be there Diane Arbus, which follows its courses in 1957. Among the personalities of which it makes the portrait one counts Frank Sinatra and Georges Simenon. In 1952, it begins a series on the Jazz and will photograph inter alia Louis Armstrong and Ella Fitzgerald.

Model will teach until its death in 1983.

Permanent exposures of its works

Kemper Museum off Contemporary Art, Kansas City
Los Angeles County Museum off Art, Los Angeles
Museum off Photographic Arts, San Diego

Rewards

1965, purse Guggenheim
1968, honorary member of American Association off Magazine Photographers
1973, price of Creative Public Artists Service Program
1981, honorary doctor of New School for Social Research
1982, Medal of the town of Paris

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