Reflections
Lisette Model
Lisette Model (1901 - 1983) was an Austrian born American photographer. Before she was a photographer in 1934 Model lived in paris with her mother and sister, Olga, who was an experienced photographer. Olga taught her the technical aspects of photography, like darkroom work.
Model had a passionate relationship with her camera and her subjects. Edward Steichen, one-time director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, considered her to be one of the foremost photographers of our time. Known for her stark, biting portraits of people on the street, Model was capable of displaying a softer side through her work, as seen in her series' "Running Legs" and "Reflections."
Model had the ability to approach her subjects with a candor that many photographers never achieve. A physically large woman, she wanted to define the dignity of the stereotypical overweight immigrant woman. She found that the best way to achieve this was to compare women at different social levels-the social elite to the working class.
Model's attraction to the "common man," could be seen in her early pictures on the Promenade des Anglais and later in her pictures capturing the inhabitants of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Through these people she sought out life's extremes, exposing humanity in its baser forms yet touching on its heightened sensibilities. She was brilliant in her use of shadows, angles, grains, and other means available to expose the complexities of her subjects. Model was also willing to try new techniques. She experimented with cropped negatives, an approach many photographers would not think of taking, preferring to leave their negatives intact. By cropping her negatives, Model was able to manipulate the image in order to tell a story from her perspective, even if the original picture showed something different.
Model's photographs appeared on display in a number of shows, both individual and with others. She was a favorite at the Museum of Modern Art, where she had 13 one-woman shows between 1940 and 1962. Other sites where her work was displayed included New York City's Photo League, the Art Institute of Chicago, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, New York's Limelight Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Smithsonian Institution, Galerie Zabriskie in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Art, Yale University's School of Art, Boston's Vision Gallery, Amsterdam's Galerie Fiolet, London's Photographers Gallery, and Austria's Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandium.
In 1950, Model became a master teacher of photography at the New School for Social Research in New York City and remained there until 1983.
Model had a passionate relationship with her camera and her subjects. Edward Steichen, one-time director of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, considered her to be one of the foremost photographers of our time. Known for her stark, biting portraits of people on the street, Model was capable of displaying a softer side through her work, as seen in her series' "Running Legs" and "Reflections."
Model had the ability to approach her subjects with a candor that many photographers never achieve. A physically large woman, she wanted to define the dignity of the stereotypical overweight immigrant woman. She found that the best way to achieve this was to compare women at different social levels-the social elite to the working class.
Model's attraction to the "common man," could be seen in her early pictures on the Promenade des Anglais and later in her pictures capturing the inhabitants of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Through these people she sought out life's extremes, exposing humanity in its baser forms yet touching on its heightened sensibilities. She was brilliant in her use of shadows, angles, grains, and other means available to expose the complexities of her subjects. Model was also willing to try new techniques. She experimented with cropped negatives, an approach many photographers would not think of taking, preferring to leave their negatives intact. By cropping her negatives, Model was able to manipulate the image in order to tell a story from her perspective, even if the original picture showed something different.
Model's photographs appeared on display in a number of shows, both individual and with others. She was a favorite at the Museum of Modern Art, where she had 13 one-woman shows between 1940 and 1962. Other sites where her work was displayed included New York City's Photo League, the Art Institute of Chicago, the California Palace of the Legion of Honor, New York's Limelight Gallery, the National Gallery of Canada in Ottawa, the Smithsonian Institution, Galerie Zabriskie in Paris, the San Francisco Museum of Art, Yale University's School of Art, Boston's Vision Gallery, Amsterdam's Galerie Fiolet, London's Photographers Gallery, and Austria's Tiroler Landesmuseum Ferdinandium.
In 1950, Model became a master teacher of photography at the New School for Social Research in New York City and remained there until 1983.
A common theme is Lisette Model's reflection photos are the use of mannequins in shop windows. She frequently uses the reflective surface on the window to overlap the figures with the city opposite the window. This creates and interesting effect where the two different parts come together as one complete image. These photos are often take from a low angle, making the mannequins appear very small against the massive buildings and the way they are shot almost makes it look like the mannequins are looking up at them. Her using shop windows creates great pictures because they are something that is familiar to everyone and we all walk past them often but taking photographs in them in this way makes you see them in a different way. Another recurring theme of some of her photos is when she takes a picture of herself reflected in a window or mirror. These photos are normally quite face on and have clear different section of light and structure so they often have good rule of thirds. They allow the viewer to look further into who the photographer is because you can see who they are and also their surroundings (+what camera they use).
Lee Friedlander
Lee Friedlander, born in 1934, began photographing the American social landscape in 1948. With an ability to organize a vast amount of visual information in dynamic compositions, Friedlander has made humorous and poignant images among the chaos of city life, dense landscape and countless other subjects. In 2005, Friedlander was the recipient of the prestigious Hasselblad Award as well as the subject of a major traveling retrospective and catalog organised by the Museum of Modern Art. In 2010, the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York exhibited the entirety of his body of work, America by Car.
Much of Lee Friedlander's work is similar to Lisette Model's aesthetically since they are both old black and white photos revolving around mirrors. She also uses the same technique of photographing mannequins in shop windows with the reflection of the buildings opposite overlaying them. Something quite different however is her how she often photographs the side mirrors of cars as a way of capturing another type of reflective surface.