Tuesday, May 26, 2026 – Explore 1930’s New York Through a Photographer’s Lens

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The Midcentury Street Photographer

who

Documented New Yorkers

in all their raw,

Unfiltered Humanity

Lisette Model, born into an upper-class Jewish-Catholic family in Vienna in 1901, didn’t set out to be a photographer.

Ephemeral New York

Tuesday, May 26, 2026

Issue # 1686

As a young woman she moved to Paris and studied music with Modernist composer Arnold Schoenberg.

Through Schoenberg, she was introduced to the emerging style of German Expressionism, in which painters used aggressive brushstrokes and exaggerated forms to highlight the psychological turmoil of modern life.

After abandoning a music career, Model thought she would become a darkroom technician—then realized taking photos was more to her liking. She borrowed a 35 millimeter camera from her sister and set out to document men and women lounging on the beach in Nice.

“The nascent photographer lifted the camera to her eye and captured them in a series of images that draw out the awkwardness of their well-fed, well-dressed bodies and the fascination of faces modeled by age, which appear almost grotesque, but also striking, even sculptural,” states Artsy.

After marrying Russian-born painter Evsa Model in 1937 and immigrating with him to New York one year later amid growing antisemitism in Europe, she committed herself to a career as a visual artist.

Model published photos in magazines like PM and Harper’s Bazaar, and she became part of the city’s postwar photography community. The couple’s first Gotham home was in the Master Apartments on Riverside Drive.

Drawing on the influence of German Expressionism, she pioneered a different kind of street photography, relying on tilted angles and close-ups to expose the raw, unposed, and unbeautiful sides of her subjects and reflect their inner emotions rather than the city outside.

One of Model’s earliest photos, taken in the 1940s for Harper’s Bazaar, brought her to Coney Island (second photo). “There she found a corpulent woman in a black bathing suit and with a beaming expression that radiated confidence and joyfulness,” states Artsy.

“Model captured this woman—who would become immortalized in her photographs as the Coney Island bather—standing in a high crouch and lying on her side with her head propped up on one arm.”

Jazz clubs and the Lower East Side became popular haunts for Model. There she found her subjects in unguarded moments, displaying their imperfect humanity against an unsentimental (and often close-cropped) stage or streetscape.

Unsparing portraits weren’t her only focus. Model seemed to be captivated by street life of New York City, its vitality and mystery. She produced a series of photos that reveal the city’s many layers in shadows and glass reflections.

“Then, as now, the storefront served as mirror and stage, showcasing a performative play of products and pedestrians,” wrote MOMA under a 1939 photo exhibited in the museum: “Reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York.” (fourth photo)

Unsparing portraits weren’t her only focus. Model seemed to be captivated by street life of New York City, its vitality and mystery. She produced a series of photos that reveal the city’s many layers in shadows and glass reflections.

“Then, as now, the storefront served as mirror and stage, showcasing a performative play of products and pedestrians,” wrote MOMA under a 1939 photo exhibited in the museum: “Reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York.” (fourth photo)

Model continued teaching and taking photos through the 1970s. In 1982, she died of heart failure. Intensely private, she seemed to give few formal interviews or publicly share thoughts about her craft.

She apparently did leave one simple piece of advice: “Never take a picture of anything you are not passionately interested in” is a quote often attributed to her.

CREDITS

Ephemeral New York

[Top photo, “Little Man, Lower East Side,” National Gallery of Art; second photo, “Coney Island,” MOMA; third photo: “Lower East Side,” Sotheby’s; fourth photo: “Reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York,” National Gallery of Art; fifth photo, “Lower East Side,” MOMA; sixth photo: “Window Reflections,” MOMA; seventh photo: “Sammy’s, New York,” Whitney Museum of Art]

JUDITH BERDY

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