Lisette Model. A performance in photography

he mid-20th-century photographer Lisette Model (1901-1983) is equally renowned for her shoot-and-run portraits of strangers and her mystification of her own life story. This selection of twenty vintage prints from the National Gallery of Canada will introduce Model’s work to Halifax in the context of the city-wide photographic festival, Photopolis.

Trained as a musician, the Austrian-born Model gave up music in 1933 and acquired her first Rolleiflex camera. Her biting portraits of wealthy tourists sunning themselves on the promenade des Anglais, Nice (1934), secured her reputation as a gifted street photographer. In 1938 she moved to New York City, where on numerous magazine assignments she produced the series Running Legs (1940-41), Reflections (1939-45), the celebrated Coney Island Bather (1941), and images shot in the working-class bars Sammy’s and Nick’s (1942-1950).

Guest Curator George Steeves is known for his collaborative approach to performative portraiture and his technical expertise in chemical photography. His catalogue essay treats Model’s work from his perspective as a photographer with similar interests. Steeves also poses a question not yet asked in the extensive literature on this great photographer: how did she transpose her considerable talent as a musical performer into the realm of visual art?