Lisette Model : Street Life

Lisette Model captures a grotesque vision of postwar American society with her bold and ironic street photography

Published alongside a double solo show with Horst P. Horst at CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia, this book presents a selection of over 100 images by Austrian photographer Lisette Model (1901–83). Model is known primarily as an influential teacher to notable 20th-century photographers such as Diane Arbus and Larry Fink, but her own work as a pioneering and irreverent street photographer reveals a unique and grotesque vision of humanity―the close-up shots, the use of flash, the exasperated contrasts all accentuate the imperfections of the bodies, the flashy clothes, the coarse gestures. There is no interaction between Model and her subjects, who tend to be caught suddenly, while they eat, sing or gesticulate awkwardly, transformed by her shots into the characters of an irreverent human comedy. This is the first Italian-language volume to be published on the artist.