[Louis Armstrong, Basin Street East, New York]
Model promoted the spontaneity of the small handheld camera, which she used to reveal the fleeting emotional states of her subjects. Here, she captures Louis Armstrong—a pioneer of solo improvisation—in a moment of enraptured melodious passion from an intimate vantage point. Before taking up photography, Model trained in Vienna as a singer under the expressionist composer Arnold Schoenberg. More than a decade after immigrating to the United States, Model revisited these early themes of musical abstraction in portraits of jazz musicians at performances in New York City, Boston, and Rhode Island. Model originally intended to publish these images in a book alongside poems by Langston Hughes, but unable to secure funding, she never completed the project.
Artwork Details
- Title: [Louis Armstrong, Basin Street East, New York]
- Artist: Lisette Model (American (born Austria), 1901–1983)
- Person in Photograph: Person in photograph Louis Armstrong (American, New Orleans, Louisiana 1901–1971 New York)
- Date: ca. 1954–56
- Medium: Gelatin silver print
- Dimensions: Image: 10 7/8 × 13 3/4 in. (27.6 × 35 cm)
- Classification: Photographs
- Credit Line: Purchase, Alfred Stieglitz Society Gifts, 2019
- Object Number: 2019.33
- Rights and Reproduction: © The Lisette Model Foundation, Inc.
- Curatorial Department: Photographs
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Lisette Model
1939–40, printed 1940s
Lisette Model
1940–41
Lisette Model
1934–37
Lisette Model
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Lisette Model
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