Louis Armstrong
Lisette Model American, born Austria
Person in photograph Louis Armstrong American
Not on view
Model promoted the spontaneity of the small handheld camera, which she used to reveal the fleeting emotional states of her subjects. Here, she captures Louis Armstrong—a pioneer of solo improvisation—in a moment of enraptured melodious passion from an intimate vantage point. Before taking up photography, Model trained in Vienna as a singer under the expressionist composer Arnold Schoenberg. More than a decade after immigrating to the United States, Model revisited these early themes of musical abstraction in portraits of jazz musicians at performances in New York City, Boston, and Rhode Island. Model originally intended to publish these images in a book alongside poems by Langston Hughes, but unable to secure funding, she never completed the project.
