Shelved during the McCarthy era, Model's photographs of jazz musicians—together with a text by Langston Hughes—are finally published for the first time
Clth, 10 x 12 in. / 240 pgs / 25 color / 316 duotone. | 11/4/2025 | Awaiting stock $65.00
Published by Eakins Press Foundation. Edited with text by Audrey Sands. Text by Langston Hughes. Afterword by Loren Schoenberg.
Street photographer Lisette Model spent more than 10 years documenting Louis Armstrong, Billie Holiday, Duke Ellington, Percy Heath, Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie and countless other luminaries of America's jazz scene. From the 1956 Newport Jazz Festival to nightclub shows and raucous afterparties in cramped apartments, Model's images are effusive and full of empathy, celebrating jazz at a time when the genre was under increasing political and cultural scrutiny. During the 1950s, the New York Photo League was investigated by the House Un-American Activities Committee for purported connections to the Communist Party. Model was interviewed by the FBI and eventually placed on its National Security Watchlist. This mounting political pressure led publishers and funders to rescind support of Model, and ultimately caused her to shelve the book dedicated to her jazz pictures, which was to feature an essay by Langston Hughes. Now, this clothbound book finally realizes Model's self-censored project, providing a fresh look at familiar faces who today signify the fight for freedom, equality and creative expression. Alongside Hughes' original essay, texts by author Audrey Sands and saxophonist Loren Schoenberg underscore the importance of this series and the revelatory insight it shines on jazz music, both onstage and off. Lisette Model (1901–83) was born in Vienna. She moved to Manhattan in 1938 and two years later Model hosted her first solo exhibition with the New York Photo League. Following the group's dismantlement by the FBI, Model transitioned to teaching. Her most notable pupils included Diane Arbus, Helen Gee and John Gossage.
Published by Silvana Editoriale. Text by Claudio Composti, Larry Fink, Monica Poggi.
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.
Published by Aperture. Preface by Berenice Abbott.
Lisette Model is an unsurpassed introduction to one of the twentieth century's most significant photographers--a woman whose searing images and eloquent teachings deeply influenced her students Diane Arbus, Larry Fink and many others. To mark the twenty-fifth anniversary of Model's death in 1983, Aperture is reissuing this classic, highly collectible 1979 monograph--the first book ever published on Model--in the original oversized trim and with the original distinctive design by Marvin Israel, along with an updated chronology and bibliography. This timeless volume contains more than 50 of Model's greatest images, from the rich idlers on the Promenade des Anglais in the South of France to the sad, funny and often eccentric inhabitants of New York's most subterranean haunts. As Berenice Abbott said in her preface, "One of the first reactions when looking at Model's pictures is that they make you feel good. You recognize them as real because real people express a bit of the universal humanity in all of us."
PUBLISHER Aperture
BOOK FORMAT Hardcover, 12 x 15 in. / 112 pgs / 54 duotones.
PUBLISHING STATUS Pub Date 9/1/2007 No longer our product
DISTRIBUTION Contact Publisher Catalog:
PRODUCT DETAILS ISBN 9781597110495TRADE List Price: $55.00 CAD $65.00
Lisette Model
Lisette Model