10 November 1901 – 30 March 1983, was an Austrian-born American photographer and a member of the Photo League in New York. Born Elise Amelie Felicie Stern in Vienna, she initially studied music, including composition with Arnold Schönberg and voice training. After leaving Vienna in 1926, she lived between Paris and Nice and turned fully to photography around 1933.

In Nice she produced a series on wealthy visitors along the Promenade des Anglais, published in 1935 in the magazine Regards, marking her emergence in socially engaged street photography. In 1937 she studied with Florence Henri. She emigrated to the United States in 1938, where she worked for Harper’s Bazaar and became associated with photographers such as Ansel Adams and Berenice Abbott.

In New York she joined the Photo League and held her first solo exhibition there in 1941. Her work from this period included photographs made in hotels, bars, and nightclubs on the Lower East Side, bathers at Coney Island, shop-window reflections, and studies of moving figures. During the McCarthy era the dissolution of the Photo League and the political climate limited her magazine work, after which she concentrated on subjects such as jazz musicians.

Teaching formed a central part of her later career. From 1949 she taught at the California School of Fine Arts and from 1951 until her death at the New School for Social Research in New York. Her students included Diane Arbus, Larry Fink, Bruce Gilden, and others. Her direct, socially engaged approach made her one of the influential figures in twentieth-century photography.

Reference
Biography text from Wikipedia (CC BY-SA), German edition. Retrieved February 12, 2026.
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lisette_Model