Model Lisette

(b Vienna, 10 Nov 1906; d New York, 30 March 1983).

American photographer of Austrian birth. A school-friend of Gertrude Schoenberg, she studied music first with her father Arnold Schoenberg, before continuing her studies in Paris. She was a self-taught photographer and tried to find ways of working in photography, training as a technician in a photographic laboratory. In 1938 she settled in New York. Two years later the photographer Ralph Steiner (1899–1986) published her series of photographs, Promenade des Anglais, which she had taken in Nice in 1937. The series was characteristic of her work in revealing her obvious love of people, seen for example in Promenade des Anglais (1937), which depicts a rotund woman in a large sunhat, sitting precariously on a bench. The photographers Alexey Brodovitch (1898–1971) and Beaumont Newhall (b 1908) were impressed by her work.

French Riviera, 1937

At Sammy's
1940-44

Gambler, French Riviera
1937

Running Legs
1940-41

Fashion Show, Hotel Pierre, New York
1940-46

Reflection, New York (Delancey Street)
1940-1950

Albert-Alberta, Hubert's Forty-second Street Flea Circus, New York
1945

Running Legs
1940-41

We Mourn Our Loss
1945

Reflections, NYC, Fifth Avenue

Belmont Park Race Track, seated man with umbrella

Untitled

Broadway Singer, Metropolitan Café, New York

Coney Island, Standing

Lower East Side, New York, 1940s