Overview
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."Editorials
Library Journal
To mark the 25th anniversary of photographer Lisette Model's death, Aperture is reissuing this oversized 1979 monograph with updates to the bibliography and chronology; it is concurrent with an exhibition showing through November 1 at the publisher's gallery in New York City. Model, often described as one of the 20th century's most significant photographers, was born in Austria and came to the United States in 1938. In the early 1940s, she began freelancing for Harper's Bazaar, and in the early 1950s, she started teaching at the New School for Social Research in New York, where she continued to teach until a year before her death. Following an artfully written preface by Model's friend and colleague Berenice Abbott are some 50 duotone photographs, one to each page spread. These are not images of beautiful people; rather, they are beautiful images that capture the essence of people. Here, Model captures the rich and the poor, the overweight and the frail, and the old and the middle aged, in both their frivolity and their quiet, private moments. Recommended for public and academic libraries with photography collections.
—Valerie Nye