In the summer of 1934, a young woman named Lisette Model took a break from her life in Paris to visit her mother and sister in Nice. While there, she borrowed a 35-millimeter camera from her sister, Olga, and took it to the Promenade des Anglais, an upscale stretch along the Mediterranean seaside that was popular with a moneyed crowd. In the line of Model’s keen (or unforgiving) sight, the men and women lounging in the promenade’s comfortable chairs became so many sitting ducks.
The nascent photographer lifted the camera to her eye and captured them in a series of images that draw out the awkwardness of their well-fed, well-dressed bodies and the fascination of faces modeled by age, which appear almost grotesque, but also striking, even sculptural. “You cannot imagine how fantastically boring it can be to look hour after hour at a beautiful body,” Model once said, referring to a stint studying painting in Paris and working from live models. “But an ugly body can be fascinating.”
Shortly before she tested her photographic acuity in Nice, Model had decided to switch from pursuing a career in music to experimenting with one in photography. Her sister had become enamored with the medium, and together with her friend, Rogi André, she introduced it to Model—who quickly took to it for reasons both practical and personal.
