Exhibition: ‘Lisette Model’ at the Instituto de Cultura, Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid

Exhibition dates: 23rd September 2009 – 10th January 2010

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Riviera – elderly woman from the series Promenade des Anglais
Nice c. 1934
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

An interesting discussion of the life and work of Lisette Model (and her influence on Diane Arbus and vice versa) can be found on the AMERICANSUBURB X: THEORY website in an article by Elsa Dorfman titled “Ann Thomas on Lisette Model”. More photographs by Lisette Model can be found on the Masters of Photography website including some fabulous “Running Legs” images.

Dr Marcus Bunyan

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Many thankx to Fundacion MAPFRE for allowing me to publish the photographs in the posting. Please click on the photographs for a larger version of the image.

 

 

“New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear.”

“Photography starts with the projection of the photographer, his understanding of life and himself into the picture.”

“New images surround us everywhere. They are invisible only because of sterile routine convention and fear. To find these images is to dare to see, to be aware of what there is and how it is. The photographer not only gets information, he gives information about life.”

.
Lisette Model

 

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Running Legs, NYC, 42nd Street
c. 1940-41
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Running Legs, 5th Avenue [Jambes de passants, 5e avenue]
New York
c. 1940-1941
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Sammy’s
New York
1940-1944
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Lower East Side
c. 1942
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Albert-Alberta, Hubert’s Forty-second Street Flea Circus
New York
1945
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Belmont Park
New York
1956
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

If Lisette Model took up photography as a way of earning a living, it is also true that she always fought for her own subjects, rather than simply carry out the assignments given by editors. She believed that for a photograph to be successful its subject had to be something that “hits you in the stomach.” This could be something familiar or something unfamiliar. For Model, the camera was an instrument for probing the world, a way of capturing aspects of a permanently changing reality that otherwise we would fail to see.

Model always said that she looked but did not judge. Yes, her photographs of the Promenade des Anglais in Nice were published by the left-wing journal Regards, in 1935, but she was not interested exclusively either in the rich or in the poor, and her images are much more about human relations. Her work evinces empathy, curiosity, compassion and admiration, and reflects the photographer’s attraction to voluminous forms, energy and liveliness, to emphatic gesture and expression: the world as stage. The critic Elizabeth McCausland has described Model’s camerawork as expressing “a subconscious revolt against the rules.”

This exhibition of some 120 of Lisette Model’s most representative photographs illustrates the very bold and direct approach to reality that made her one of the most singular proponents of street photography, the particular form of documentary photography that developed in New York during the 1940s, through the camerawork of such as Helen Levitt, Roy de Carava and Weegee.

Alongside the photographs, archive film and sound recordings of Lisette Model will evoke the photographer’s life, and there will be copies of magazines to which she contributed (Regards, Harper’s Bazaar, etc.).

Exhibition organised by Jeu de Paume and Fundación MAPFRE, Madrid.

Text from the Jeu de Paume website [Online] Cited 01/01/2010 no longer available online

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Promenade des Anglais
Nice c. 1934
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Gambler, French Riviera
1937
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Coney Island Bather [Baigneuse, Coney Island]
New York
c. 1939-1941
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Diana Vreeland, New York
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Restaurant, New York
c. 1945
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Reflections [Reflets]
New York
c. 1939-1945
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Reflection [Reflet]
New York
c. 1939-1945
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Sammy’s, New York
1940-1944
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Las Vegas, on the bar
c. 1945
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Metropole Cafe
New York
c. 1946
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Fashion show, Hotel Pierre, New York City
1940-1946
Gelatin silver print
Collection Fundación MAPFRE
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Woman with Veil, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Opera, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

Lisette Model (American born Austria, 1901-1983)
Opera, San Francisco
1949
Gelatin silver print
National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa
© The Lisette Model Foundation

 

 

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Madrid 28020
Phone: 91 581 16 28

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