Inge Morath (Austrian, 1923-2002)
Primarily working in black and white, Inge Morath researches her subjects and cultivates their confidence and openness before requesting to photograph them in their homes among their personal possessions. She first became interested in Saul Steinberg’s paper masks of human faces after seeing them featured in The New Yorker in the late 1940s and captured her friends donning them in a number of pictures. Steinberg, along with sculptor Louise Bourgeois and author Boris Pasternak, were among Morath’s favorite subjects.
Morath was born in Graz, Austria and attended school at Berlin University where she became fluent in French, English, and Romanian (she would later also learn Spanish, Russian, and Chinese). During WWII, she fled on foot and refused to directly photograph war afterwards. First employed as a translator and journalist, she switched to photography through the Magnum agency and its co-founder Robert Capa’s encouragement. In this role, she traveled widely throughout Europe, North America, and the Middle East. Morath would transition into photographing film sets for motion pictures, such as The Unforgiven and The Misfits, where Morath met her future husband, playwright Arthur Miller.
