Lisette Model (born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern; November 10, 1901 – March 30, 1983) was an Austrian-born American photographer primarily known for the frank humanism of her street photography.

A prolific photographer in the 1940s and a member of the New-York cooperative Photo League,[1] she was published in PM's Weekly, Harper's Bazaar, and US Camera before taking up teaching in 1949 through the intermediary of Ansel Adams.

[9] Due to growing anti-Semitism in Austria and her father's struggle with his Jewish-Austrian identity, he had their last name changed to Seybert in February 1903,[3] and six years later, her younger sister Olga was born.

[3] At age 19, she began studying music with composer (and father of her childhood friend Gertrude[11]) Arnold Schoenberg, and was familiar to members of his circle.

[3] Model left Vienna with Olga and Felicie for Paris after her father died of cancer in 1924 to study voice with Polish soprano Marya Freund in 1926.

[3] Felicie and Olga moved on to Nice, but Lisette stayed in Paris, the new cultural hub after WWI, to continue studying music.

These years were referred to as her lonely period, as she frequented cafés alone and struggled to immerse herself into a radically different social group than the bourgeoisie class she had grown up surrounded by.

Model claimed that "I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad",[3] but her friends from Vienna and Paris would go on to say that she had high standards for herself and a strong desire to excel at whatever she did.

[3] She also stated that the only lesson she ever got in photography, other than from her sister, was from Rogi André, who told her "Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in",[3] a quote she would rework later and become well-known for in her teaching career: "Shoot from the gut".

Her decision to become a professional photographer came from a conversation in late 1933 or early 1934 with a fellow Viennese émigré and former student of Schoenberg, Hanns Eisler (who had previously fled Germany once Hitler came into power).

Visiting her mother in Nice in 1934, Model took her camera out on the Promenade des Anglais and made a series of portraits – published in 1935 in the leftist magazine Regards[11] – which are still among her most widely reproduced and exhibited images.

These close-cropped, often clandestine portraits of the local privileged class already bore what would become her signature style: close-up, unsentimental and unretouched expositions of vanity, insecurity and loneliness.

[12] Additionally, her use of a 2+1⁄4 inch square negative and larger print size were stylistic choices considered unique at a time when a proliferation of street photographers were embracing what was called the minicam.

[11] After the publication of the Promenade des Anglais images, or the "Riviera" series, Model resumed her Paris street photography practice, this time focusing on the poor.

[14] Her vision was of great interest to the editors at Harper's Bazaar, but by the 1950s, her involvement decreased dramatically, and she only published two assignments: "A Note on Blindness" and "Pagan Rome".

Letters dated that same year revealed Model's family was financially struggling in Europe, and that her mother had died of cancer on October 21.

Model's involvement with the New York Photo League became the cause of much strife for her during the McCarthy Era of the 1950s, when the organization came under scrutiny by the House Un-American Activities Committee for suspected connections to the Communist Party.

[8] Because many clients were reluctant to hire somebody who was under FBI suspicion, Model encountered increased difficulty finding opportunities to work, which played a role in her focus shift towards teaching.

"[17] Larry Fink, Helen Gee, John Gossage, Harry Lapow, Charles Pratt, Eva Rubinstein and Rosalind Solomon were also students of Model's.

She also went to photograph in Italy, but due to ill health she returned to New York earlier than anticipated, and was diagnosed and successfully treated for uterine cancer.

[23] This estate was responsible for the release of a mass of information on the notoriously private Model after her death, including 25,000 negatives (many hundreds unprinted), personal letters, lectures, press clippings, and many more sources.

The release of this information made up for the previous dearth of accurate details on Model's life, which could be partially attributed to her mistrust of written publications.