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Lisette Model, Lower East Side, New York, 1950

Lisette Model, photographer and teacher (1901 – 1983), encouraged her students to take a visceral approach to photography. This is at the heart of her own practice and evident in the immediacy of her subjects – from rich corpulent ladies in Nice to caberet drag queens and down-and-outs on the streets of New York City.

Model emigrated to New York in 1938, where the bustle of the city influenced her subjects and compositions.  The series, Reflections, shows street scenes reflected in shop windows. The multiple viewpoints of pedestrians, fragmented architecture and window displays become abstractions of urban experience.

The photos are also historically interesting - like taking  a trip to the smoky nightspots of 1940s and 50s New York.

Lisette Model is on at the Jeu de Paume (Concorde) until 06/06/10

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