Inge Morath (1923-2002) was a documentary photographer and the first woman to be accepted as a full member of the renowned Magnum Photo Agency.
Inge Morath (1923-2002) was a confident documentary photographer and the first woman to be accepted as a full member of the renowned Magnum photo agency.
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Hello! From Wonder Media Network, I’m Jenny Kaplan. This is Womanica.
This month, we’re talking about visionaries -- women who made profound contributions to the fields of photography, film, sculpture, and the performing arts.
Today’s visionary painted with her camera. She was a confident documentary photographer and the first woman to be accepted as a full member of the renowned Magnum photo agency. She was a kind of visual ethnographer and her work spanned the globe over several decades. This is the story of a photographer whose life was as extraordinary as her images. Please welcome Inge Morath.
Inge Morath was born in Graz, Austria, in 1923 to parents who were both scientists. They moved to Germany when she was young, eventually landing in Berlin during the rise of the Nazi party. Toward the end of World War II, Inge was drafted into a factory service job, where she worked alongside Ukrainian prisoners of war. She fled during an attack by Russian bombers and joined a caravan of displaced people. They traveled for 455 miles on foot to Austria.
After the war, Inge became a translator and a journalist. She befriended the photographer Ernst Haas, and wrote articles to accompany his photographs. Then, in 1949, Inge and Ernst were invited to Paris by another photographer, Robert Capa, to join the newly founded Magnum Photos.
Magnum is an international photographic cooperative. Its founding members were world renowned, at the top of their fields. And that legacy continues today, with photographers who bridge the gaps between journalist, artist and storyteller.
Inge, at first, was brought on as an editor and researcher.
An outsider in the hyper-masculine boys’ club of photojournalism, she instead forged her own path. And in 1955, she became a full member of Magnum Photos.
Inge traveled across the globe for her assignments, from Spain to Iran to the USSR. Alone.Her curiosity and warmth behind the camera made for intimate images. They captured a rare humanity through details -- of ruffled polka dot flamenco skirts that twirl, of women looking at an eclipse through tinted glass, or the smile of a young woman recently engaged, walking down a tree lined road to announce the news. Inge let her subjects reveal themselves to her and became an extraordinary portraitist.
All her life, Inge maintained a gift for words as a prolific diarist and letter-writer.
This gift would make her unusual among her photographer colleagues. She later wrote: “After the war I had often suffered from the fact that my native language, German, was for most of the world the language of the enemy, and although I was able to write stories in English or French it did not touch the roots.” Photographs, then, “felt both like a relief and an inner necessity”.
She was drawn to photographing artists. Later, on the set of a movie, Inge met the famous playwright Arthur Miller. After he and Marylin Monroe divorced, Miller and Inge married. They stayed together for 40 years.
Inge Morath died in New York City in 2002. The range of her work was vast and influential -- personal as well as universal. Speaking of his wife, Miller said, "She made poetry out of people and their places over half a century."
All month, we’re honoring incredible, artistic visionaries.
For more information and pictures of some of the work we’re talking about, find us on Facebook and Instagram @womanicapodcast.
Special thanks to Liz Kaplan, my favorite sister and co-creator. And another special thanks to Alesandra Tejeda who curated this month’s theme.
Talk to you tomorrow!