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[Singer, Sammy's Bar, New York]

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: about 1940–1944
Medium: Gelatin silver print
Culture: American
Department: Photographs
Institution: Getty Museum

Bowery old-timers claim her voice has had no match for power and ferocity since Maggie Cline used to stun with "Knock 'Em Down McCloskey." The uncredited text, referring to this photograph of the bar singer known as "Tillie," accompanied a group of Lisette Model's photographs made at Sammy's Bar that were reproduced in the September 1944 *Harper's Bazaar* magazine. Taken from below and at a slight diagonal angle, the image captures the vitality and vibrancy of the performer belting it out on the stage at Sammy's, a local favorite in the Bowery district of New York, also visited by photographers Weegee and Diane Arbus. The angle from which the photograph was made also emphasizes the gleaming microphone, which seems to rise up to meet the challenge of projecting Tillie's already powerful voice.

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