Lisette Model

(American/Austrian, 1901–1983)

Lisette Model was an Austrian-born American photographer whose work portrayed city life. By getting up close to her human subjects, Model conveyed the sense of a chance event. “The snapshooter’s pictures have an apparent disorder and imperfection, which is exactly their appeal and their style,” she once explained. Born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern on November 10, 1901 in Vienna, Austria, she studied music under the avant-garde composer Arnold Schoenberg as a young woman. Moving to Paris in 1924, she met the Russian painter Evsa Model, whom she married and gaine her surname. By 1933, Model had given up music to pursue visual art, attending the painting courses of André Lhote, and basic instructions on photography from her younger sister Olga. After emigrating to New York with her husband in 1937, Model began working as a photographer for Harper’s Bazaar, whose editor at the time was the esteemed Alexey Brodovitch. Along with her own career, Model also taught photographer, some of her students included Diane Arbus and Larry Fink. The artist died on March 30, 1983 in New York, NY. Today, her works are held in the collections of the Art Institute of Chicago, The Museum of Modern Art in New York, and the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., among others.