Lisette Model (born
Elise Amelie Felicie Stern,
November 10,
1901 –
March 30,
1983) was an
Austrian-born
American photographer.
Lisette Model was born Elise Felic Amelie Stern in
Vienna, Austria. Her father was an
Italian/Austrian doctor of
Jewish descent attached to the Austro-Hungarian Imperial and Royal Army and, later, to the International Red Cross; her mother was
French and
Roman Catholic, and Model was
baptised into her mother's faith. Two years after her birth, her parents changed their family name to
Seybert. According to interview testimony from her older brother, she was sexually molested by her father, though the full extent of his abuse remains unclear.
She was primarily educated by a series of private tutors, achieving fluency in three languages. At age 19, she began studying music with composer
Arnold Schönberg, and was familiar to members of his circle. "If ever in my life I had one teacher and one great influence, it was Schönberg," she said.
Model left Vienna for Paris after her father's death in 1924 to study voice with Polish soprano Marya Freund. It was during this period that she met her future husband, the French-Jewish painter Evsa Model. In 1933 she gave up music and recommitted herself to studying visual art, at first taking up painting as a student of
Andre Lhote (whose other students included
Henri Cartier-Bresson and
George Hoyningen-Huene). She also took up photography, taking basic instruction in darkroom techniques from her younger sister Olga Seybert (herself a life-long professional photographer), although Parisian portrait photographer Rogi Andre was the person Model credited with providing her primary instruction in camera techniques.
Visiting her mother in Nice in 1934 (she and Olga had emigrated from Vienna several years prior), Model took her camera out on the
Promenade des Anglais and made a series of portraits which are among her most widely reproduced and exhibited images. These close-cropped, often clandestine portraits of the local privileged class already bore what would become her signature style: close-up, unsentimental and unretouched expositions of vanity, insecurity and loneliness.
She married Evsa Model in 1937 and the following year they emigrated to join her husband's sister in Manhattan. There she supported herself as a photographer, having work published regularly in
Harper's Bazaar by editors
Carmel Snow and
Alexey Brodovitch. Model eventually became a member of the New York 'Photo League,' which would host her first dedicated showing.
In 1951, Model was invited to teach at the
New School for Social Research in New York City, where her longtime friend
Berenice Abbott was also teaching photography. Model's best known pupil was
Diane Arbus, who studied under her in 1957, and Arbus owed much of her early technique to Model's example. Model continued to teach until her death in New York City in 1983.
Public collections of her work are held at the following institutions:
Source
- "Lisette Model" by Ann Thomas, published by the National Gallery of Canada to accompany an exhibition of Model's work which travelled the United States, Canada, and Germany during 1990–1992.
Books
Category:American photographersCategory:Women photographersCategory:Austrians of French descentCategory:Austrians of Italian descentCategory:Austrian AmericansCategory:Austrian-American JewsCategory:Paternal JewsCategory:People from ViennaCategory:1901 birthsCategory:1983 deathscs:Lisette Modelováde:Lisette Modelfr:Lisette Modelja:リゼット・モデルpl:Lisette Modelru:Модел, Лизетта
