Inge Mörath

Infobox Artist
bgcolour =
name = Inge Morath


imagesize =
caption = Self Portrait, Jerusalem, 1958.
birthname = Ingeborg Mörath
birthdate = birth date|1923|5|27
location = Graz, Austria
deathdate = death date and age|2002|1|30|1923|5|27
deathplace = New York City, USA
nationality = Born Austrian, Naturalized American
field = Photography
training =
movement =
works =
patrons =
influenced by =
influenced =
awards =

Ingeborg Morath (May 27, 1923 in Graz, Austria – January 30, 2002 in New York City) was an Austrian-born photographer.

Biography

Early Years (1923 - 1945)

Ingeborg Mörath was born in Graz, Austria. Her parents were scientists whose work took them to different laboratories and universities in Europe during her childhood. Educated in French speaking schools, Morath and her family relocated to Darmstadt, a German intellectual center, in the 1930s, and then to Berlin, where Morath's father directed a laboratory specializing in wood chemistry. Morath was registered at the Luisenschule near Bahnhof Friedrichstrasse. [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 4. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.]

Morath's first encounter with avant-garde art was the "Entartete Kunst" (Degenerate Art) exhibition organized by the Nazi party in 1937, which sought to inflame public opinion against modern art. "I found a number of these paintings exciting and fell in love with Franz Marc's "Blue Horse"," Morath later wrote. "Only negative comments were allowed, and thus began a long period of keeping silent and concealing thoughts." [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 5. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.]

Germany began the Second World War in 1939. After finishing high school, Morath passed the "Abitur" and was obliged to complete six months of service for the "Reichsarbeitsdienst" (Reich Labour Service) before entering Berlin University. At university, Morath studied languages. She became fluent in French, English, and Romanian in addition to her native German (to these she later added Spanish, Russian, and Chinese). "I studied where I could find a quiet space, in the University and the Underground stations that served as air-raid shelters. I did not join the "Studentenschaft" (Student Organization)." [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 9. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.] Towards the end of the war, Morath was drafted for factory service in Tempelhof, alongside Ukrainian prisoners of war. During an attack on the factory by Russian bombers, she fled on foot to Austria. In later years, Morath refused to photograph war, preferring to work on stories that showed its consequences.

Middle Years (1945 - 1962)

After the Second World War, Morath worked as a translator and journalist. In 1948, she was hired by Warren Trabant, first as Vienna Correspondent and later as the Austrian editor, for "Heute", an illustrated magazine published by the US Information Agency in Munich. Morath encountered photographer Ernst Haas in post-war Vienna, and brought his work to Trabant's attention. [Trabant, Warren. "Letter to Alex Haas". Unpublished: August 1987. Ernst Haas Archive.] Working together for "Heute", Morath wrote articles to accompany Haas' pictures. In 1949, Morath and Haas were invited by Robert Capa to join the newly-founded Magnum Photos in Paris, where she would work as an editor. Working with contact sheets sent into the Magnum office by founding member Henri Cartier Bresson fascinated Morath. "I think that in studying his way of photographing I learned how to photograph myself, before I ever took a camera into my hand." [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 15. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.]

Morath was briefly married to the British journalist Lionel Birch and relocated to London in 1951. That same year, she began to photograph during a visit to Venice. "It was instantly clear to me that from now on I would be a photographer," she wrote. "As I continued to photograph I became quite joyous. I knew that I could express the things I wanted to say by giving them form through my eyes." [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 17. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.] Morath applied for an apprenticeship with Simon Guttman, who was at that time an editor for "Picture Post" and running the picture-agency Report. When Guttman demanded to know what Morath wanted to photograph, and why, she answered that "after the isolation of Nazism I felt I had found my language in photography." [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 18. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.] After Morath had spent several months working as Guttman's secretary, he finally set her to work. She sold her first photographs, of opening nights, exhibitions, inaugurations, etc., under the pseudonym Egni Tharom, her own name spelled backwards. [Morath, Inge. "About Myself," in "Inge Morath: Life as a Photographer", page 15. Munich: Gina Keyahoff Verlag, 1999.]

Morath divorced Birch and returned to Paris to pursue a career in photography. In 1953, Morath presented her first large picture story, on the Worker Priests of Paris, to Capa, and he invited her to join the agency as a photographer. Her first assignments for Magnum were stories that were of no interest to "the big boys." One of her earliest assignments took her to London for a story about the inhabitants Soho and Mayfair. Morath's portrait of Mrs. Evelyn Nash, from that assignment, is among her best known photographs. In 1953-54, at Capa's suggestion, Morath worked with Cartier-Bresson as a researcher and assistant, and in 1955 she was invited to become a full member of Magnum Photos. During the late 1950s Morath traveled widely, covering stories in Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the United States, and South America for such publications as Holiday, Paris Match, and Vogue. She published "Guerre à la Tristesse", photographs of Spain, with Robert Delpire in 1955, followed by "De la Perse à l'Iran", photographs of Iran, in 1958. Morath published more than thirty monographs during her lifetime.

Like many Magnum members, Morath worked as a still photographer on numerous motion picture sets. Having met director John Huston while she was living in London, Morath worked on several of his films. Huston's "Moulin Rouge" (1952) was one of Morath's earliest assignments as a photographer, and her first time working in a film studio. When Morath confessed to Huston that she had only one roll of color film to work with and asked for his help, Huston obtained three more rolls for her, and occasionally waved to her to indicate the right moments to step in with her camera. [Morath, Inge. "I Trust My Eyes (Manuscript for Berlin Lecture)", page 22. Unpublished: date unknown. Inge Morath Foundation.] Huston later wrote of Morath that she "is a high priestess of photography. She has the rare ability to penetrate beyond surfaces and reveal what makes her subject tick." [Morath, Inge. "Portraits". New York: Aperture Foundation, 1986.]

In 1960, while photographing the making of "The Unforgiven", starring Audrey Hepburn, Burt Lancaster, and Audie Murphy, Morath accompanied Huston and his friends duck hunting on a mountain lake outside Durango, Mexico. Photographing the excursion, Morath saw through her telephoto lens that Murphy and his companion had capsized their boat 350 feet from shore, and that Murphy, stunned, was near to drowning. A skilled swimmer, Morath stripped to her underwear and hauled the two men ashore by her bra strap while the hunt continued uninterrupted. [ [http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,892368,00.html/"Epic in Durango"] , Time Magazine: March 23, 1959.]

Morath worked again with Huston in 1960 on the set of "The Misfits", a blockbuster film featuring Marilyn Monroe, Clark Gable, and Montgomery Clift, with a screenplay by Arthur Miller. Magnum Photos had been given exclusive rights to photograph the making of the movie, and Morath and Cartier-Bresson were the first of nine photographers to work on location, outside Reno, Nevada, during its filming. [Toubiana, Serge and Arthur Miller. "The Misfits: Story of a Shoot". New York, Phaidon, 2000.] [Morath, Inge. "The Road to Reno". Göttingen, Steidl, 2006.] Morath met Miller while working on "The Misfits", and - following Miller's divorce from Monroe - they were married on February 17, 1962. Miller and Morath's first child, Rebecca, was born in September 1962. Rebecca Miller is today a film director, actress, and writer. The couple's second child, Daniel, was born in 1966 with Down syndrome and was institutionalized shortly after his birth.

Morath's achievements during her first decade of work as a photographer are significant. Along with Eve Arnold, she was among the first women members of Magnum Photos, which remains to this day a predominantly male organization. Many critics have written of the element of playful surrealism that characterizes Morath's work from this period. [For example, Lahs-Gonzales, Olivia. "To Unseal the Deeper Nature," in "Inge Morath: Life as a Photographer", page 61 - 74. Munich: Gina Keyahoff Verlag, 1999.] Morath attributed this to the long conversations she had with Cartier Bresson during their travels in Europe and the United States. Like many of her early Magnum colleagues, however, Morath's work was motivated by a fundamental humanism, shaped as much by the experience of war as by its lingering shadow over post-war Europe. This motivation grows, in Morath's mature work, into a motif as she documents the endurance of the human spirit under situations of extreme duress as well as its manifestations of ecstasy and joy.

Later Years (1962 - 2002)

After re-locating to the United States, during the 1960s and '70s Morath worked closer to home, raising a family with Miller and working with him on several projects. Their first collaboration was the book "In Russia" (1969), which, together with "Chinese Encounters" (1979), described their travels and meetings in the Soviet Union and the People's Republic of China. "In the Country," published in 1977, was an intimate look at their immediate surroundings. For both Miller, who had lived much of his life in New York City, and Morath, who had come to the US from Europe, the Connecticut countryside offered a fresh encounter with America.

Reflecting on the importance of Morath's linguistic gifts to their shared projects, Arthur Miller wrote that "travel with her was a privilege because [alone] I would never been able to penetrate that way." [Morath, Inge. "The Road to Reno." Göttingen, Steidl, 2006. Page 111.] In many respects, however, Morath's photographs and Miller's texts offer two sides of the same coin. In their travels Morath translated for Miller, while his literary work provided innumerable opportunities for Morath to encounter an international artistic elite. The Austrian photographer Kurt Kaindl, Morath's long-time colleague, has noted that "their cooperation develop [ed] without outward pressure and is solely motivated by their common interest in the people and the respective cultural sphere, a situation that corresponds to Inge Morath's working style, since she generally feels inhibited by assignments." [Kaindl, Kurt. "Inge Morath: A Photographer's Biography," in "Inge Morath: Fotografien 1952 - 1992". Salzburg: Edition Fotohof. Page 27.]

At home and wherever she traveled, Morath sought out, befriended, and photographed artists and writers. During the '50s she had photographed artists for Robert Delpire's magazine "L'Oeil", including Jean Arp and Alberto Giacometti. She met the artist Saul Steinberg in 1958. When she went to his home to make a portrait, Steinberg came to the door wearing a mask that he had fashioned from a paper bag. Over a period of several years they collaborated on a series of portraits, inviting individuals and groups of people to pose for Morath wearing Steinberg's masks. Another long term project was Morath's documentation of many of the most important productions of Arthur Miller's plays.

Some of Morath’s signal achievements are in portraiture, including posed images of celebrities as well as fleeting images of anonymous passersby. Her pictures of Boris Pasternak's home, Pushkin's library, Chekhov's house, Mao Zedong's bedroom, as well as artists' studios and cemetery memorials, are permeated with the spirit of invisible people still present. The writer Philip Roth, whom Morath photographed in 1965, described her as "the most engaging, sprightly, seemingly harmless voyeur I know. If you're one of her subjects, you hardly know your guard is down and your secret recorded until it's too late. She is a tender intruder with an invisible camera." [Morath, Inge. "Portraits". New York: Aperture Foundation, 1986.]

As the scope of her projects grew, Morath prepared extensively by studying the language, art, and literature of a country in order to encounter its culture fully. Although photography was the primary means through which Morath found expression, it was but one of many tools in a kit to which she continued to add throughout her lifetime. In addition to the many languages in which she was fluent, Morath was also a prolific diary and letter-writer; her dual gift for words and pictures that made her unusual among her colleagues. Morath wrote extensively, and often amusingly, about her photographic subjects. Although she rarely published these texts during her lifetime, Morath's posthumous publications have focused upon this aspect of her work, bringing her photographs together with journal writings, caption notes, and other archival materials relating to her various projects.

During the 1980s and '90s, Morath continued to pursue both assignments and independent projects. The film "Copyright by Inge Morath" was made by German filmmaker Sabine Eckhard in 1992, and was one of several films selected for a presentation of Magnum Films at the Berlin Film Festival in 2007. Eckhard filmed Morath at home and in her studio in Connecticut, and in New York and Paris with her colleagues, including Cartier-Bresson, Elliott Erwitt and others. In 2002, working with film director Regina Strassegger, Morath fulfilled a long-held wish to revisit the lands of her ancestors, along the borderlands of Styria and Slovenia. This mountainous region, once part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, had become the faultline between two conflicting ideologies after World War II and until 1991, when attempts at rapprochement lead to conflict on both sides of the border. The book "Last Journey" (2002), and Strasseger's film "Grenz Räume" (Border Space, 2002), document Morath's visits to her homeland during the final years of her life.

Death and Legacy

Ingeborg Morath Miller died of cancer in 2002, at the age of 78.cite news |first= |last= |authorlink= |coauthors= |title= Inge Morath, Photographer With a Poetic Touch, Dies at 78 |url= |quote= Inge Morath, a photographer who brought a whimsical, lyrical touch to her images from travelogues to reportage to portraits, died yesterday at New York Hospital in Manhattan. She was 78 and lived in Roxbury, Connecticut. Arthur Miller, her husband, said the cause of death was lymphoma. 'She made poetry out of people and their places over half a century,' Mr. Miller said. |publisher=New York Times |date=January 31, 2002 |accessdate=2007-07-21 ] The Inge Morath Foundation was established by her family, in 2003, to preserve and share her legacy.

In honor of their colleague, the members of Magnum Photos established the Inge Morath Award in 2002. The annual award is administrated by the Inge Morath Foundation, and is given to a woman photographer under the age of 30, to support work towards the completion of a long-term project.

Quotations

*

"Photography is a strange phenomenon... You trust your eye and cannot help but bare your soul". [Morath, Inge. Camera Austria: 1985/86, no. 19/20. Page 80.]

*

"Inge Morath was, above all, a traveller... [H] er approach to a story was 'to let it grow', without any apparent concern for narrative structure, trusting in her experience and interests to shape her work rather than in an editorial formula... She unsentimentally made pictures that were guided by her relationship to a place. These relationships were invariably intimate and long-lasting; she regularly revisited the places she chose to photograph and learned the relevant language... Similarly, her photographs of people are born of intimacy without sentimentality. It is as if the presentation of relationships takes the place of story structure, and her work is best understood as an ongoing series of observations of the life she made for herself". [Boot, Chris, ed. "Magnum Stories". New York: Phaidon, page 338.]

Awards

* 1992 Great Austrian State Prize for Photography.
* 1984 Doctor Honoris Causa Fine Arts, University of Connecticut, Hartford, USA.
* 1983 State of Michigan Senate Resolution NO 295; Tribute to Inge Morath.

elected One-Person Exhibitions

* 2008 "Well Disposed and Trying to See: Inge Morath and Arthur Miller in China", University of Michigan Art Museum, Ann Arbor, USA.
* 2004 "Inge Morath: The Road to Reno", Chicago Cultural Center, Illinois, USA.
* 2004 "Inge Morath: Chinese Encounters", Pingyao International Photography Festival, Pingyao, China.
* 2003 "Exposition", Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation, Paris, France.
* 2002 "Inge Morath: Danube", City Gallery of Russe, Russe, Bulgaria.
* 2002 "Inge Morath: New York", Galerie Fotohof, Salzburg, Austria; Stadt Passau, Europäische; Wochen, Germany ESWE Forum, Wiesbaden; Esther Woerdehoff Galerie, Paris, France; Amerikahaus Tübingen, Germany.
* 1999 "Retrospective," Kunsthalle Wien, Austria; FNAC Etoile, Paris, France; FNAC, Barcelona, Spain.
* 1999 "Spain in the Fifties", Museo del Cabilde, Montevideo, Uruguay.
* 1998 "Inge Morath: Danube", Festival of Central European Culture, London, UK; Museen d. Stadt Regensburg, Regensburg, Germany.
* 1998 "Retrospective", Edinburgh Festival, Edinburgh, UK; Museum of Photography in Charleroi, Belgium; Municipal Gallery, Pamplona, Spain.
* 1998 "Celebrating 75 Years" Leica Gallery, New York, USA.
* 1997 "Retrospective" Kunsthal, Rotterdam, Netherlands.
* 1997 "Inge Morath: Danube", Keczkemet Museum, Esztergom Museum, Hungary
* 1997 "Photographs 1950s to 1990s", Tokyo Museum of Photography, Tokyo, Japan
* 1996 "Women to Women", Takashimaya Gallery, Tokyo, Japan
* 1996 "Inge Morath: Danube", Neues Schauspielhaus, Berlin, Germany; Leica Gallery, New York, USA; Galeria Fotoforum, Bolzano, Italy.
* 1995 "Spain in the fifties", Museo de Arte Contemporaneo, Madrid, Spain; Museo de Navarra,Pamplona, Spain.
* 1994 "Spain in the fifties", Spanish Institute, New York, USA
* 1992/94 "Retrospective", Neue Galerie Linz, Austria ;America House, Frankfurt, Germany; Hardenberg Gallery, Velbert, Germany; Galerie Fotogramma, Milano, Italy; Royal Photographic Society, Bath, UK; Smith Gallery and Museum, Stirling, UK; America House, Berlin, Germany; Hradcin Gallery, Prague, Czech Republic.
* 1991 "Portraits", Kolbe Museum Berlin, Germany; Rupertinum Museum Salzburg, Austria
* 1989 "Portraits", Burden Gallery, Aperture Foundation, New York, New York, USA; Norwich Cathedral, Norwich, UK; American Cultural Center, Brussels, Belgium.
* 1988 "Retrospective", Union of Photojournalists, Moscow, Russia; Sala del Canal Museum, Madrid, Spain; Rupertinum Museum, Salzburg, Austria.
* 1984 "Salesman in Beijing", Hong Kong Theatre Festival.
* 1979 "Inge Morath: Photographs of China", Grand Rapids Art Museum, Michigan, USA.
* 1964 "Inge Morath: Photographs", Gallery 104, Art Institute of Chicago, Illinois, USA.

elected Monographs

* 2008 "Inge Morath: Iran". Steidl, Germany (forthcoming).
* 2006 "The Road to Reno". Steidl, Germany.
* 2002 "New York". Otto Müller/Verlag, Austria.
* 2000 "Saul Steinberg Masquerade". Viking Studio, USA.
* 1999 "Inge Morath: Life as a Photographer". Kehayoff Books, Germany.
* 1999 "Arthur Miller: Photographed by Inge Morath". FNAC, Spain.
* 1999 "Inge Morath: Portraits". Verlag, Austria.
* 1996 "Woman to Woman". Magnum Photos, Japan.
* 1995 "Donau". Verlag, Austria.
* 1994 "Inge Morath: Spain in the Fifties". Arte con Texto, Spain.
* 1992 "Inge Morath: Photographs 1952 to 1992". Otto Müller/Verlag, Autria.
* 1991 "Russian Journal". Aperture Foundation, USA.
* 1986 "Portraits". Aperture, USA.
* 1984 "Salesman in Beijing". Viking Press, USA.
* 1981 "Bilder aus Wien: Der Liebe Augustin". Reich Verlag, Switzerland.
* 1979 "Chinese Encounters". Straus & Giroux, USA.
* 1979 "Inge Morath: Photographs of China". Grand Rapids Art Museum, USA.
* 1977 "In the Country". Viking Press, USA.
* 1975 "Grosse Photographen unserer Zeit: Inge Morath". C.J. Bucher Verlag, Switzerland.
* 1973 "East West Exercises". Simon Walker & Co., USA.
* 1969 "In Russia". Viking Press, USA.
* 1967 "Le Masque (Drawings by Saul Steinberg)". Maeght Editeur, France.
* 1960 "Bring Forth the Children: A Journey to the Forgotten People of Europe and the Middle East". McGraw-Hill, USA.
* 1958 "De la Perse à l'Iran". Robert Delpire, France.
* 1956 "Venice Observed". Reynal & Co., USA.
* 1956 "Fiesta in Pamplona". Universe Books, USA.
* 1955 "Guerre à la Tristesse". Robert Delpire, France.

References

ee also

*List of Austrian artists and architects
*List of Austrians