Nan Colton presents Inge Morath

Live character portrayal of the renowned Austrian-born photographer and word-smith. Inge Morath began her artistic journey with a career in translation and journalism. Before her gift in photography was fully realized, Morath also worked for Heute as the magazine’s Austrian editor, teaming up with photographer Ernst Haas to write articles to accompany his photographs. A sample of Morath and Haas’ collaborative work found its way to Robert Capa, who invited the pair to Paris to join the burgeoning Magnum Photos agency in 1949. Morath began working as an editor and researcher for Magnum, but only a couple of years later moved to London, utterly enthralled with photography. She took on an apprenticeship with Simon Guttman, the editor of Picture Post, and began to sell her photographs under the name “Egni Tharom” before moving back to Paris to work at Magnum Photos as a photojournalist. Morath’s work at Magnum also brought her into close contact with Henri Cartier-Bresson, whom she learned from exponentially.

Morath’s career found her traveling all over the world, capturing images for magazines like VOGUE, as well as still shots of movie sets. One such set was “The Misfits,” a film written by Arthur Miller (whom Morath would later marry) that was filmed in Reno, Nevada. Morath depicted she and Cartier-Bresson’s eighteen-day road trip to “The Misfits” set in candid, honest photographs and writings that would later become her book “The Road to Reno.”

Inge Morath’s photographs tell of how she witnessed moments that showed the endurance of the human spirit under a wide variety of circumstances – from extreme duress to manifestations of the joys of life. She died in 2002 from cancer. The Inge Morath Foundation continues the work.