Lisl Steiner - Perfectly Exposed

If you look up Lisl Steiner on You Tube, you will find a video entitled “No Bullsh*t at 88 - Society is Kaput & Other Truths From an Ageless Spirit: Lisl Steiner.”  This is Lisl Steiner — at 88.  Just watch it.  Wild, fearless, totally uninhibited, genuine, a work of art. 
And that is just her, then there is her work.  It just so happened that my first peek at her photography online coincided with my listening to the song Punkrocker by the Teddybears and Iggy Pop.  As Lisl’s images rotated through the screen of my laptop, I found the combination to be wonderfully fitting.  (I encourage you to try it.)  
Her work, perfectly composed and perfectly exposed, includes images of Louis Armstrong, John F. Kennedy, Martin Luther King Jr., Henry Kissinger, Pelé, Fidel Castro, and B.B. King, among other significant figures of the 20th Century.  And for all of these stunning images, on the other side of the camera was Lisl, with her wild red hair and her flirtatious ferocity, feeling utterly comfortable approaching anyone, anywhere—as if they had just been waiting for her to come and see them.  To capture them, intimately, wonderfully, and artfully.   So strong was her tenacity and allure, it afforded her not just access to but invitation by some of the greatest, toughest, and most sought-after personalities of her time. 
Lisl Steiner was born to a Jewish family in Vienna, Austria in 1927.  However, with the onset of WWII she and her family relocated to Buenos Aires, Argentina,
where she lived until the 1960s when her career took her to New York. She would spend the rest of her life there.
Her career as an artist began almost accidentally, in 1955 when her lover gave her a camera. Within one year she was photographing the president of Argentina.  Her career spanned 70 years and produced over 25,000 works of art in photography, drawing, and painting before her death in 2023 at the age of 95. 
Lisl’s work in photography gave the world not only glimpses into the more private moments of the major personalities of her time, but also captured intimate moments in the everyday lives of children, in her series Children of the Americas, as well as images of the homeless, the addicted, and others, with her work appearing in Newsweek, Time, Life, and National Geographic. 
“She had the ability to upend her subjects with surprising questions and her electric presence,” said Steiner’s friend, Ingrid Rockefeller, “She almost insinuated herself into the photograph by drawing a laugh or a glimpse of kindness in the eyes of her subject.”
This gift Steiner had of capturing unscripted personal moments allowed her to depart from the traditional assigned photojournalism of the day and step into the world of more independent photography.  She decided what she wanted to shoot and shot it.  She was at the absolute beginning of photographers stepping over the threshold of journalistic photography into work that peeked behind the curtain to the less curated, more private, intimate, and genuine moments of their famous subjects—and at this, Lisl was exceptional.
Beginning on August 22 Lisl Steiner’s work will be on display at Gladstone in Manchester as part of, “Under the Radar, Amongst the Stars,” an exhibit featuring ten of Steiner’s photographs.  Charles Gladstone curated the images himself. 
“Downstairs we will have significant figures from the 20th Century in unusual settings, a mixture of athletes, artists, musicians, and politicians.  For upstairs, I chose two political images.  One of the day (in 1963 that US President) John F. Kennedy was shot, and the other of Martin Luther King, Jr., both very powerful images.” 
The exhibit will continue through the fall. As for that You Tube video, you will see that Lisl not only candidly answers all manner of questions about her vibrant life, creativity, and individuality, she does so while essentially stripping.  But nothing of this exercise is gimmicky or gratuitous, it is utterly symbolic.  While taking away, bit by bit, the eccentric wild assortment of her clothing, absolutely nothing is taken away from the spirit of her personality. 
In the end, what you will see, is a total act of bravery, she sits even more powerful and even more confident, willing to do more than she asked of her subjects—she is totally, perfectly, exposed.

“Under the Radar, Amongst the Stars” — opening reception Friday, August 22, 5 – 7 p.m. Gladstone 36 1/2 Union Street, Manchester.