“Her prints record a relentless probing and searching into realities among people, their foibles, senselessness, sufferings, and on occasion their greatness. The resulting pictures are often camera equivalents of bitter tongue lashings. She strikes swift, hard and sharp, then comes to a dead stop, for her work is devoid of all extraneous devices or exaggeration.”
—Edward Steichen on Lisette Model
Lisette Model, one of the most influential artists of her generation, believed that her task was to celebrate the disregarded, rejecting the glamour and distinction of most documentary photography at the time. In her own words, she endeavoured to ‘photograph America’s self-portrait a million times projected and reflected, to make the image of our image.’ Large-format, early prints of Coney Island Bather, her best-known work, are exceedingly rare and seldom available for public sale – the current lot has been in the same private collection for over 15 years. Later prints of this image are held in a number of institutions, including Tate Britain, London; the International Center of Photography, New York; the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa.