This
month Lisl Steiner, celebrated longtime Pound Ridge resident and noted
photojournalist, is flying to Vienna to be part of a celebration for the
opening of a new exhibit at the Jewish Museum of Vienna. “I’m going for the vernissage, she said, using the French term.
“They invited me for the preview party, which is private, and then I’ll stay
for the ending party, too.”
Ms. Steiner, who often enjoys breakfast at The
Bedford Post where she is on a first name basis with the servers who know to
bring her espresso with a dollop of whipped cream in a separate cup, was
dodging questions about her 63 year photojournalism career.
“It’s nice to be recognized before you kick the
bucket,” she said, wryly, cutting into a pancake. “But now everyone wants to
talk to me, to meet me. I’m forced to go to these events. I’m a victim of my
own success,” she joked.
In the course of her many years behind the lens, Ms.
Steiner has photographed Henri Cartier-Bresson, Oscar Niemayer, Martin Luther King,
Alfred Eisenstaedt, Louis Armstrong, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, Pele, Robert
Kennedy, Duke Ellington, Miles Davis, Leonard Bernstein, Cornell Capa, Carmen
Amaya, Adlai Stevenson, Franz Beckenbauer, Rod Steiger, Pau Casals, Pablo
Neruda, Nat King Cole, Sir Thomas Beecham, Dwight Eisenhower, Jimmy Carter,
Erich Leinsdorf, B.B. King, Jorge Luis Borges, Friedrich Gulda ... just to name
a few. Ms. Steiner, who was born in 1927 in Vienna, worked as a photojournalist
for Life, Time, Newsweek, The New York Times, Keystone Press Agency, O
Cruzeiro and other international publications. She was featured in the legendary
magazine Leica World. Photographic exhibitions featuring her work have
been held worldwide.
Some of Ms. Steiner’s more renowned images include Henri
Cartier-Bresson waiting for Fidel Castro in a New York street, and Miles Davis
on stage playing the trumpet. Emigrating with her family from Austria to Buenos
Aires, Argentina in 1938, during the 1940’s she studied drawing privately with Ignazio
Kaufman, and was also active in the Argentine film industry, involved, she
said, in the production of over 50 documentaries. She was also part of the
emerging Arte Madi movement with Gyula Kosice, and in
the 1950’s began traveling the world as a freelance photojournalist. In 1962, now
living in Pound Ridge, she became involved with the Caramoor Music Festival
where she remains to this day their resident sketch artist. In 1999 the Galerie
Johannes Faber gave an exhibition of her photography work; the same year, the
Austrian National Library began to house her sketches. In 2000 the Leica
Gallery hosted a full retrospective of her work. In 2004 her photographic
archive was gifted to the Austrian National Library. Today, ever on the move
and peripatetic, Ms. Steiner carries on with her pet project, Children of
America, comprising images of children from all countries of South, Central,
and North America.
“I commute now to Vienna; I’ve been there 3 times
now in two months,” she said. Over more coffee she relayed how she had recently
met a man she said was obsessed with Robert Capa, the Hungarian combat
photographer who redefined wartime photojournalism by climbing into the
trenches. “He called me a lost link to his grand research,” Ms. Steiner said,
wincing. “I feel like Lucy, Dr. Leakey’s famous elephant.”
The majority of Ms. Steiner’s famous images were
made with a 35 mm Leica rangefinder camera, although she has also used a
Rolleiflex Automat and the Rolleiflex 3.5F Model 3. At the WestLicht Camera
Auction House in Vienna, she recently sold one of her cameras for what she said
was a great deal of money. “I didn’t expect anything,” she said, sipping her
coffee serenely. The WestLich Photographica Auction has established itself as an
important camera auction house, setting record sales for the most beautiful and
rare pieces. Money Ms. Steiner made from the sale of one of her cameras she
plans to use to underwrite future travel and self-imposed photojournalism
projects.
“I’m 86 years old and I don’t mind dying,” Ms.
Steiner said. Feisty and eagle-eyed, she seems a long way off from that. “I
have lived a good and exciting life. Some people never experience anything.
I’ve been in the jungle. I’ve been in the Amazon. I just photographed what
happened in Pound Ridge during Hurricane Sandy. I know what to do when you have
to improvise.”
Ms. Steiner recently curated an exhibit of
photography now on display at the cheese shop in Pound Ridge known as Plum
Plums.
“You should go see it,” she said, collecting the
check at the Bedford Post. “It’s very good.”
For more information about Lisl Steiner and her body
of work, check out her website, www.lislsteiner.com. Eve Marx
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