Online: The Life and Legacy of Inge Morath with Rebecca Miller

Time: 
Monday, May 8, 2023 - 4:00pm to 4:30pm
Location: 
Online
Open to: 
Description: 

This year marks the centennial of Inge Morath (1923-2002), a legendary and groundbreaking photographer whose photographs and papers are archived at Beinecke Library. Rebecca Miller (Yale College ’85), will discuss her mother’s life and legacy in this special Mondays at Beinecke.
Mondays at Beinecke online talks focus on materials from the collections and include an opening presentation at 4pm followed by conversation and question and answer begininng about 4:30pm until 5pm.
Zoom webinar registration: https://bit.ly/3Hca3h2
For more about Inge Morath and the archive, see detailed finding aid: https://archives.yale.edu/repositories/11/resources/941)
Inge Morath was born in Graz, Austria. After studying languages in Berlin, she became a translator, then a journalist and the Austrian editor for Heute, an Information Service Branch publication based in Munich. All her life, Morath would remain a prolific diarist and letter-writer. A friend of photographer Ernst Haas, she wrote articles to accompany his photographs and was invited by Robert Capa and Haas to Paris to join the newly founded Magnum agency as an editor and researcher. She began photographing in London in 1951, and joined Magnum Photos as a photographer in 1953. While working on her own first assignments, Morath also assisted Henri Cartier-Bresson during 1953-54, becoming a full member in 1955. In the following years, Morath traveled extensively in Europe, North Africa and the Middle East. Her special interest in the arts found expression in photographic essays published by a number of leading magazines. After her marriage to playwright Arthur Miller in 1962, Morath settled in New York and Connecticut. She first visited the USSR in 1965. In 1972 she studied Mandarin and obtained a visa to China, making the first of many trips to the country in 1978. Much of Morath’s most important work consists of portraits, but of passers-by as well as celebrities. She was also adept at photographing places. Inge Morath died in New York City on 30 January 2002.