Getty Museum

[Divorcée, Reno]

Creator

American Photographer · 1901–1983

Artist

Lisette Model began her creative life as a student of music. Through avant-garde composer Arnold Schönberg, with whom she studied piano, she became exposed to the Expressionist painters of early twentieth-century Vienna. She never formally studied photography but took it up in the 1930s while living in Paris. An early piece of advice received from a colleague--"Never photograph anything you are no

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Date: 1949
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

This photograph was made on assignment for *Harper's Bazaar* magazine. Lisette Model was assigned to photograph the women who resided at dude ranches in Nevada for the six weeks required to qualify for residency and obtain a quick divorce. The divorcée seen here, wearing an embroidered Western-style shirt, her eyes hidden behind sunglasses in the blinding hot Nevada sun, erects a barrier between herself and the photographer. Her right hand and half-smoked cigarette prevent the camera from getting too close, as do the elaborate rhinestone-encrusted glasses that reflect stark windows and not much else. The circumstances of her stay in Reno lend an air of desperation to her defensive comportment.

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