Fearing for her safety, Lisette Model buried her photos of artists like Billie Holiday
Fearing for her safety, Lisette Model buried her photos of artists like Billie Holiday and Louis Armstrong, but a new book reveals them to the world. March 18, 2026 Julia Curl Hyperallergic Printer friendly Facebook Mail Lisette Model: The Jazz Pictures Audrey Sands With texts by Langston Hughes & Loren Schoenberg Eakins Press Foundation ISBN: 978-0-87130-102-4 Despite the many books and exhibitions on photographer Lisette Model, her largest body of work was a well-kept secret: more than a thousand photographs of the East Coast jazz scene taken between the early 1940s and 1959. Model didn’t just dabble in jazz — she dove into it, capturing greats like Billie Holiday, Louis Armstrong, Ella Fitzgerald, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, and Dizzy Gillespie as they lit up a sparkling musical universe. How and why, then, did these images from such an esteemed photographer remain hidden until today? Audrey Sands, associate curator of Photography at the H...
