The reporter with a painterly eye

Humour was a vital ingredient in legendary photographer Inge Morath’s pictures who was equally at ease with post-war reportage and fashion portraits.

Beijing, 1978. 6.30 am

Inge Morath

“Inge Morath’s photography resists definition,” says Carole Naggar, photography historian and Series Editor for the Magnum Photos Legacy Biography series. “It is fresh in approach, classic in composition and versatile. She is equally at ease with reportage, fashion and portrait and also has a sense of whimsy…I think that her most important contribution to the history of the medium is her capacity to create not only striking individual images but in-depth stories, a preoccupation that many contemporary photographers now share.”

Born in Austria in 1923, Morath endured a life of pain and struggle in Germany as a young woman. Towards the end of World War II, she was forced to work in a munitions factory alongside Ukrainian prisoners of war. When Allied bombs exploded on Berlin, she joined hundreds of fleeing men and women and embarked upon an arduous journey of 455 miles on foot to unite with her parents in Salzburg, Austria. Overcoming the traumatic experience, she reinvented herself in post-war Vienna as a reporter, researcher and editor. Her love for art, literature and languages helped her both in writing and photography.

In 1955, after a nine-month-long intense training under the legendary photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, Morath was invited to join the international photographic cooperative Magnum. Armed with her multi-lingual proficiency, she contributed immensely to the worldwide spread of Magnum thereafter.

During her internship with Cartier-Bresson, Morath travelled with him on several assignments. She absorbed the essence of his method, and learnt ‘the conviction of composition, the constant alert, truth to the subject, ruthlessness when there was something to photograph.’ Cartier-Bresson was a hard master and demanded undivided attention. Morath reportedly was required to carry the luggage, keep his cameras loaded with film, and make notes for his pictures. It is also said that Cartier Bresson and Morath were also on-and-off lovers, for nearly ten years, prior to Morath’s marriage to the Pulitzer Prize-winning American playwright Arthur Miller in 1962.

A true world citizen

A woman of exceptional self-confidence and charming disposition, Morath excelled both in documenting places and capturing compelling portraits. As she travelled across continents (often alone), she became a true world citizen. Her love for fellow beings and fluency in many languages brought her close to her subjects in Spain, China, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Syria, Jordan, the United States, South Africa, Ireland, and Romania, among others. Before embarking upon any trip, she would studiously research that country’s culture, history, people and language. Her world-spanning documentary work not only focused on arts, artists, nature and people but also hinted at the contradictions prevalent in various societies.

“In her photographs of Spain, Russia, and China, for example, made over a span of many years, she documented the evidence of ongoing clashes between tradition and modernity,” observes John P Jacob, curator of photography. “Rather than photographing conflicts, however, Morath focused on the ways in which, even under the most oppressive circumstances, the human creative spirit finds expression: through social and religious rituals, posturing and costuming, work, sport, and dance, music, art, and theatre. The thread that runs through Morath’s life — and through her life’s work in photography — is an affirmation that the human spirit endures through such creative self-expression.”

Morath’s portraiture work was prolific and included pictures of her own self. Besides common people, she befriended a host of artists, writers and performers, and shot them in captivating moments. She worked mainly in black-and-white but was also an early pioneer of colour photography. Among others, her pictures of sculptors Henry Moore and Louise Bourgeois, painter Saul Steinberg, and writers Norman Mailer and Arthur Miller became very popular.

“Her photographs speak for her, down the years, establishing her as an artist with a painterly eye, who never condescended to her subjects but waited patiently for the moment when they would reveal themselves to her,” wrote Sarah Crompton in The Guardian. “Although she was never a photojournalist, the range of her work was vast, from the ethnographic beauty of the studies she made of Iran on a journey there in 1956 to photographs of poverty in Gaza in 1960 to her portraits and coverage of fashion shows. Her approach was unsentimental and direct. She had no airs or graces.”

Miller, Marilyn and Morath

Morath did not define herself as a feminist but was known to be very open about her many relationships. Her marriage to Arthur Miller lasted 40 years until her death in 2002. Miller (whose literary pieces included incredible plays such as The Crucible, Death of a Salesman, All My Sons, and A View from the Bridge) was married to American heartthrob Marilyn Monroe when he and Morath met in 1960 while she was taking publicity stills on the set of the film The Misfits (which had Miller’s screenplay). Miller divorced Marilyn in 1961; and married Morath the following year.

There seems to have been a mutual admiration among the three. Morath, who photographed Marilyn extensively during the making of The Misfits, found the actress to be amazing, “because she moved in a natural and sophisticated way, it was incredible. Like the Queen of England, she had translucent skin. Depending on the day, she could be funny, other times seemed troubled. I tried to take pictures of her where she wasn’t posing, like the one where she’s dancing.”

Miller reflected that Morath’s pictures of Marilyn were particularly empathetic and touching “as she caught Marilyn’s anguish beneath her celebrity, the pain as well as her joy in life.” He also revealed that Marilyn too liked Morath, "appreciating her kindness and the absence — remarkable in a photographer — of all aggression. She doted a little on the pictures Inge Morath had taken of her, sensing real affection in them."

Marilyn died on 4 August 1962, aged 36 years from an overdose of barbiturates. Morath was 78 when she succumbed to lymphoma on 30 January 2002. Miller outlived both of them. On February 10, 2005, when he died of heart failure, he was 89.