With its proximity to the cultural hub of New York City and its quieter suburban and rural landscapes, Connecticut was fertile ground for artists and writers in the period of Modernist movements between 1913 and 1979. Many of these cultural figures are well known through biographical and critical studies. Creative Places seeks to show how place played a significant role in creative work, and how in turn the artists and writers influenced communities in Connecticut.
Inge Morath
Photography
1923 – 2002
Morath excelled at portraiture, photographing in the 1950s and 1960s artists like Jean Arp, Alberto Giacometti and Louise Bourgois, and writers such as Saul Steinberg and Philip Roth. She also documented many of Arthur Miller’s most important plays. Her intimate images of life in northwest Connecticut attested to the work and friendships of the circle of artists in the area.
- Biography/Description of Work
Born in Austria in 1923, her family lived in Germany in the 1930s, and she was at university when World War II broke out. Having been drafted for factory service alongside prisoners of war, when she later picked up a camera, she wanted to document the consequences of war. Briefly married to a British journalist in 1951, she began pursuing photography in earnest, apprenticing with Simon Guttman, an editor and picture-agency manager. During the 1950s, she photographed and wrote about Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the United States, and South America. She was invited to join the Magnum Photo Agency, founded by top photographers in Paris, in 1953. That work often involved still photography on film sets, as in 1962 on the set of ‘The Misfits’ where she first met Arthur Miller. They married in 1962, and raised their family in Roxbury. During the 1980s and 1990s, she worked on independent projects as well as outside assignments. She died in 2002 at the age of 78.
- Sources view
- Lehman, Eric D. and Amy Nawrocki. 2014 Literary Connecticut. Charleston: The History Press.
NY Times obituary [ http://www.nytimes.com/2002/01/31/arts/inge-morath-photographer-with-a-poetic-touch-dies-at-78.html ]
Wikipedia. - Associated Resource(s)