I love this piece by Inge Morath. You can get a signed and numbered limited edition print from the Corcoran gallery. It's from the documentary about Inge's life as a photographer by German filmmaker Sabine Eckhard.
Born in Austria in 1923 to two scientists, Morath grew up in Germany and studied language at Berlin University, speaking French, English, Romanian and German (and according to her foundation later Spanish, Italian, Russian, and Chinese) -- amazing! Towards the end of WWII, she escaped to Austria and worked as a journalist and translator. In post-war Vienna she met photographer Ernst Haas and started writing articles to accompany his photographs.
During a visit to Venice in 1951, she started taking photographs.
“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 got an apprenticeship, used the pseudonym Egni Tharom to sell her first photographs and soon moved to Paris. She started as a photographer capturing small assignments and by 1955 was a full member of Magnum Photos Agency traveling the world.
She also worked as a still photographer on movie sets, where she was able to capture famous stars in film, including The Misfits, where she presumably met Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. And, of course, in 1962 Morath married playwright Arthur Miller (who had divorced Marilyn Monroe the year before) and relocated to the USA. Morath and Miller worked together, raised a family together, and were married until she died. She has worked on many, many projects and with amazing writers, artists, filmmakers, movie starts, etc. etc. Check out Magnum Photos and the Inge Morath foundation for more ...
