mc2gallery is proud to present the solo show by Lisette Model (1901-1983). American photographer of Austrian origin, known for her absolutely unconventional “street” images and for her absurdly spontaneous portraits.
Not only an artist but also a teacher and source of inspiration for a large generation of young photographers, including Diane Arbus. Among his series of portraits, the surprising “Promenade des Anglais”, set in the road that runs along the Nice promenade, was created in 1934 and stands out for its unique and direct style, attentive to the position of the body and the revealing gestures of a precise social status. These are often portraits of the wealthy local class, portraits that will characterize Lisette’s unmistakable style: dispassionate close-ups, displays of vanity, insecurity and solitude, obtained by enlarging and cutting the negatives in the darkroom. After the French period, it was the Big Apple that inspired it. Here he will make some of his most famous series, primarily “Reflections”.
The shots capture the multi-dimensionality of the city, reflected in the shop windows, often along Fifth-Avenue.
Lisette also spends a lot of her time in the simple cafes of the Lower East Side where she elaborates the series that we could call freer, “Running Legs”, in which she provides an extraordinary vision of the city, capturing its frenetically “sick” rhythm. She works with deep blacks, without ever giving up on details and developing an uncompromising, never complacent realism. She focuses on the wrinkles of a woman wearing makeup under her hat, on deformed hands full of rings or on the fragility of a body that reveals itself under the appearance of the dress. Lisette Model has earned a prominent role in the so-called Street Photo of the New York scene of the 1940s. She inaugurated an immediate and spontaneous photographic style, aimed at immortalizing a reality in constant change, creating a gallery of grotesque but full of humanity portraits.
