The life, portraits, and travels of Inge Morath in an exhibition at Milan's Museo Diocesano

The Diocesan Museum “Carlo Maria Martini” in Milan opens to the public, from June 19 to November 1, 2020, the exhibition Inge Morath. Life. Photography, a retrospective dedicated to the Austrian photographer Inge Morath (Graz, 1923 - New York, 2002), with 150 images and original documents to reconstruct the unmana and professional story of the first woman to join the renowned Magnum Photos agency.

Curated by Brigitte Blüml-Kaindl, Kurt Kaindl and Marco Minuz, the exhibition traces Inge Morath’s journey from her beginnings alongside Ernst Haas and Henri Cartier-Bresson to her collaboration with prestigious magazines such as Picture Post, LIFE, Paris Match, Saturday Evening Post and Vogue, where Inge published her major travel reportages (from Italy to Russia, from Spain to Iran via China), which she prepared with maniacal care, studying the language, traditions and culture of each country where she went, to the point that her husband, the famous playwright Arthur Miller, had this to say that “as soon as she sees a suitcase, Inge starts packing it.”

The exhibition presents some of her most famous reportages, such as the one she made in Venice in 1953, with images captured in less-traveled places and in the working-class neighborhoods of the lagoon city, espousing the Magnum agency’s photographic tradition of portraying people in their everyday lives. Some surreal settings and strongly graphic compositions are an explicit reference to the work of his early mentor, French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson.

The exhibition continues with photographs of Spain, a country Inge visited often, as early as 1954, when she was commissioned to reproduce some paintings for the French art magazine L’Oeil and to portray Pablo Picasso’s sister Lola, who was often reluctant to be photographed, but also of communist Romania, her native Austria, and the United Kingdom. Then there is a section devoted to Paris, which the photographer often visited, meeting there with the founders of the Magnum agency, namely Henri Cartier-Bresson, David Seymour, and Robert Capa. Being not only the first woman to join Magnum, but also the agency’s youngest photographer, she was assigned in Paris to work on jobs she considered minor, such as fashion shows, art auctions or local parties. However, even in these images her interest in the quirky aspects of everyday life clearly emerges.

Travel photography resumes with reportage from Russia, a country she always dreamed of visiting, and to which she approached studying its culture and learning its language before her first trip, which took place in 1965, in the company of her husband Arthur Miller, then president of the PEN club (an international nongovernmental association of literati). During the trip, Inge and the consoerte had the opportunity to visit Russian artists and intellectuals oppressed by the regime, as well as complete official programs. From that trip came an extensive photographic work that in the following years was enriched by other material collected on other occasions.

This world tour with Inge Morath continues in Iran, where he was able to deepen his knowledge of the country by capturing the relationship between old traditions and the transformations triggered by modern industrial society in a strongly patriarchal nation. It ends with photographs of New York, where in 1957 the photographer made a reportage for Magnum: she focused on the Jewish quarter and daily life in the city, but also made portraits of artists with whom she befriended. New York, as evidenced by the book of the same name published in 2002, would remain an important place throughout her life. In fact, after her marriage to writer Arthur Miller in 1962, Morath moved to an old, isolated farmhouse in Roxbury, about a two-hour drive from New York City. A country place far from the hustle and bustle of the city, where he raised his two children Rebecca and Daniel.

The exhibition also gives ample space to portraiture, a theme that accompanied her throughout her career. On the one hand, she was attracted to celebrities, such as Igor Stravinsky, Alberto Giacometti, Pablo Picasso, Jean Arp, Alexander Calder, and Audrey Hepburn; on the other hand, she was attracted to the simple people she met during her reportages. Among the most iconic shots is the photograph of Marilyn Monroe performing dance steps in the shade of a tree, taken on the set of the 1960 film The Displaced, the same place where Inge met Arthur Miller, who at the time was married to the American actress herself. Inge Morath’s interest was always in the human being as such: her photographic style was rooted in post-World War II humanistic ideals but also in the photography of the “decisive moment,” as Henri Cartier-Bresson had called it. Indeed, each of his portraits was based on an intense relationship or even a deep knowledge of the person immortalized. One section also features the series of curious “masked” portraits that arose from his collaboration with the draftsman Saul Steinberg, which date back to his first trip to New York during which he became acquainted with the American draftsman’s artistic production and was enthusiastic about it: in the 1960s, Steinberg had begun to make his series of masks and asked Inge Morath to find people to photograph in the appropriate clothes for these masks. The shots have in common that they are set in everyday New York life.

“In Inge Morath’s photographs,” writes curator Marco Minuz, “there always emerges an element of closeness, not only physical, but above all emotional. Hers is a direct work, devoid of areas of uncertainty or mystery. His work is, like good journalism, straightforward, devoid of compassion and ambiguity. Her images always have the ability never to simplify what is complex, and never to complicate what is simple; they are strongly descriptive and at the same time exude a rare ability to analyze the context with which she was dealing. It was a systematic approach that prompted her, before any work, to study and delve into the cultures with which she would relate, and thus come to know seven languages. But ultimately, in full agreement with one of the dogmas of the Magnum agency, the real priority for Inge Morath has always been the human being.”

The exhibition, produced by Suazes, Fotohof and Magnum Photos, with the support of the Austrian Culture Forum, with the support of Rinascente, media partner IGP Decaux, can be visited during the opening hours of the Diocesan Museum of Milan: Tuesday through Sunday from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. (the ticket office closes one hour before). Exhibitions can also be visited daily from 6 to 10 p.m. (entrance from Corso di Porta Ticinese 95). For the exhibition + museum formula, the ticket is 8 euros, reduced price 6. For visits during evening hours, the first drink at the Chiostro Bistrot is mandatory: drink and exhibition at a cost of 10 euros. A Silvana Editoriale monographic volume accompanies the exhibition. For all information you can visit the website of the Diocesan Museum of Milan.

Pictured: Inge Morath, Self-Timer (detail), Jerusalem, 1958, © Fotohof archiv/Inge Morath/ Magnum Photos

The life, portraits, and travels of Inge Morath in an exhibition at Milan's Museo Diocesano

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