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The
Photography of Inge Morath
“Photography is a strange
phenomenon...
You trust your eye and
cannot help but bare your soul”
Inge Morath
Ingeborg Morath was born 27th
May 1923, in Graz, Austria. Both parents were highly educated
scientists.
Morath
studied languages and wanted to pursue a career in writing. The Second
World War changed the direction of Inge’s life and as a teenager she
was sent to a labour camp for refusing to join Hitler’s Youth. In 1944
she worked as an interpreter for the USA, moving to France in 1950 she
began working for the Austrian photographers Ernst Haas and Erich
Lessing. Inge would write text/captions to accompany their
photographs.
During 1951 she took up
employment with Picture Post magazine in London as a photojournalist
and was soon to travel on behalf of the magazine to
Hollywood for a brief assignment.
On her first trip to New York
she was interrogated by immigration inspectors suspected of having
communist connections because she had a book about movie stars called
‘Stardust in Hollywood’ in her suitcase published by the ‘Left Book Club’ of
London.
It was in 1960 during the
shooting of The Misfits in
Reno that Inge met
both Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe. Inge arrived with Henri
Cartier-Bresson to photograph the filming. In his autobiography
Timebends Arthur Miller said of Marilyn’s feelings towards Inge;
“Marilyn liked her at once,
appreciating her considerate kindness and the absence – remarkable in
a photographer – of aggression. She doted a little on the pictures
Inge Morath had taken of her, sensing real affection in them”
Whilst
filming The Misfits, Marilyn and Arthur’s marriage was speeding
rapidly towards the end of it’s life, culminating in divorce on
January 20th 1961 – and whilst Miller claimed there was
nothing between him and Morath during filming, he went on to marry the
photographer on February 17th 1962, she was already
pregnant with Arthur’s child. Marilyn found this very painful to deal
with so quickly after their break up as it had been her dearest wish
to have a child with Arthur. Inge and Arthur’s daughter Rebecca, who
is now a well known and respected screenwriter, director and actress
is married to the English actor Daniel Day Lewis, she was born less
than 6 weeks after Marilyn’s death.
In 1966 Inge
gave birth to a son named Daniel, who was born with Down Syndrome.
Arthur did not have the emotional capacity to deal with a disabled
child and he was therefore, at Arthur’s instigation, institutionalised
shortly after his birth. Whilst Inge was a regular visitor until her
death, it has been reported that Arthur Miller did not visit and
Daniel.
Miller has described their
years together “the best” of his life and he dedicated his
autobiography Timebends (published 1987) to her.
Inge died of
cancer in 2002 on January 30th.
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