Room Guide
Room 6
Characters
This room features a mix of both ordinary people and celebrities from different periods.
In the 1950s, Philippe Halsman gave studio portraiture an energy formerly associated with the street by asking celebrities simply to jump. Persuading them to lose control for an instant helped him to avoid a frozen pose. ‘The mask falls. The real self becomes visible. One only has to snap it with the camera’, he explained.
By contrast, contemporary photographer Andres Serrano gives street culture a formality commonly associated with the studio. His portraits of the often unnoticed, poverty-stricken figures of the city were taken in an improvised studio in the New York subway. Serrano elevates his subjects by posing them almost regally.
Arthur Fellig became known as Weegee (‘Ouija’) because of his uncanny ability to be on the scene of a crime almost as it happened. He would tune into police radio signals and usually manage to beat the authorities to the scene, gathering raw images of violence and distress that he developed in the boot of his car.
Lisette Model and Diane Arbus also found their subjects on the streets of New York. The mask of urban glamour seemed to wither under their critical lenses. Both women were significant figures in the flourishing of street photography in New York in the 1950s and 1960s.
- Other works in this room
- Lisette Model (Elise Amélie Felicie Stern, later Seybert) (1901 Vienna – 1983 New York)
Montparnasse, 1937, 42.2 x 50.5 cm
Fotografische Sammlung, Museum Folkwang, Essen - From the portfolio Twelve Photographs, published in 1976
Man with Pamphlets, Paris, 1937, 40 x 49.5 cm
Woman with Veil, San Francisco, 1949, 40 x 49.5 cm
Promenade des Anglais, Nice, 1937, 40 x 49.5 cm
Olbricht Collection - Philippe Halsman (1906 Riga – 1979 New York)
From the series Jump photographs
Edward Steichen, 1959, 24.3 x 30.4 cm
Weegee, 1961, 33.5 x 42.6 cm
Grace Kelly, 1955, 33.5 x 42.6 cm
Marilyn Monroe, 1959, 33.5 x 42.6 cm
© Philippe Halsman Estate – Magnum Photos - Andres Serrano (1950 New York, lives in New York)
From the series Nomads, 1990
John Paul
Pete
Gussie
Cibachrome, silicone, Plexiglas, each 152.4 x 125.7 cm
©Andres Serrano. Courtesy of the artist and Paula Cooper Gallery, New York - Diane Arbus (1923 New York – 1971 New York)
- Woman with a Veil on Fifth Avenue, N.Y.C., 1968, 37.6 x 37.2 cm
Fotografische Sammlung, Museum Folkwang, Essen - A Woman with Pearl Necklace and Earrings, N.Y.C., 1967, 40.6 x 50.8 cm
Child with a Toy Hand Grenade in Central Park, N.Y.C., 1962, 30.2 x 29.5 cm
A Child Crying, N.J., 1967, 50.8 x 40.6 cm
Olbricht Collection - Madame Yevonde (Yevonde Middleton) (1893 London – 1975 London)
From the series Goddesses, 1935
Lady Bridgett Poulett photographed as Arethusa (head and shoulders), 42 x 27.5 cm
Vivex colour print
National Portrait Gallery, London - Mrs James Beck as Daphne, 37 x 26.5 cm
Lady Milbanke as Queen of the Amazons (Penthesilea),37.2 x 27.9 cm
Vivex colour prints
New Media Museum, Bradford - Weegee (Usher Fellig) (1899 Zloczew, Austria – 1968 New York)
Transvestite, 1940s, 21.7 x 18.6 cm p. 205
Their First Murder, 9 October 1941, 1941, 30.4 x 27.1 cm
Open air canteen, Broadway and 47th street at five in the morning,1940s, 34 x 26.9 cm
Corpse with glasses, 11 August 1941, 25.6 x 33.5 cm
Selfportrait, Working in the trunk of his Chevrolet, 1942, 24 x 19.3
Galerie Berinson, Berlin
- Lisette Model (Elise Amélie Felicie Stern, later Seybert) (1901 Vienna – 1983 New York)