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Running Legs

A work made of gelatin silver print.

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  • A work made of gelatin silver print.

Date:

1940-41

Artist:

Lisette Model
American, born Austria, 1901–1983

About this artwork

Lisette Model gained a reputation in her native Vienna and in France for making unconventional street images and candid portraits, a pattern that continued when she emigrated to New York in 1938. Model worked on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar, Cosmopolitan, and Vogue magazines and taught at the New School for Social Research, where she was a mentor to many young photographers, most notably Diane Arbus. This image is among the earliest Model made upon arriving in the United States. Model’s radical viewpoint heightens the crowded feeling of a city sidewalk packed with pedestrians in motion; it also resists the fascination with height in Manhattan, a famously vertical island, by keeping the camera pointedly downward.

Status

Currently Off View

Department

Photography and Media

Artist

Lisette Model

Title

Running Legs

Place

United States (Artist's nationality:)

Date  Dates are not always precisely known, but the Art Institute strives to present this information as consistently and legibly as possible. Dates may be represented as a range that spans decades, centuries, dynasties, or periods and may include qualifiers such as c. (circa) or BCE.

Made 1940–1941

Medium

Gelatin silver print

Inscriptions

Unmarked recto; inscribed verso, upper left, in graphite: "Lisette Model"; inscribed verso, center, in graphite: "Lisette Model"; stamped verso, lower center, in black ink: "© Lisette Model"

Dimensions

Image/paper: 27.1 × 34.4 cm (10 11/16 × 13 9/16 in.)

Credit Line

Gift of the Photographic Society

Reference Number

1983.918

Extended information about this artwork

Object information is a work in progress and may be updated as new research findings emerge. To help improve this record, please email . Information about image downloads and licensing is available here.

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