Her ‘portraits’ were sometimes taken without the viewer’s awareness or permission at other times, although aware, her subjects seem not to care about the presence of the photographer, as for example in many of her pictures of old or homeless people on the streets of New York. In 1937 Model took her camera out to the Promenade des Anglais during a trip to Nice and photographed the privileged classes at leisure.
Model’s photographs of the late 1930s and early 1940s are mostly close-up shots of people encountered on the streets of Paris, New York or the French Riviera. It also features the 1945 photograph Window reflections, Fifth Avenue, New York City, which relates to a series of photographs Model made of reflections and the legs of passers-by shot among the crowded streets of New York. One of Model’s best-known images, of a female bather in the sea at Coney Island of 1939–41, is included in the portfolio. They were selected by Model to form a coherent group representative of her early practice which includes shots taken in America, France and Monaco. The photographs were printed in an edition of twenty-five in New York by master printers Gerd Sander and Richard Benson, under Model’s close supervision. This is one of a portfolio of twelve black and white photographs that were taken by Model in the 1930s and 1940s and printed in 1976 (Tate P79965– P79976).
