Before traveling to Italy in the early 1930s, Lisette Model had no interest in photography. “I just picked up a camera without any kind of ambition to be good or bad,” she said. In 1933, while living in Paris, the untrained Model began working full-time as a photographer. She held herself to a single standard: “Never photograph anything you are not passionately interested in.” In 1938, as anti-Jewish sentiment spread across Europe, Model moved to Manhattan. Soon she was part of a swirl that included Carmel Snow and Alexey Brodovitch at Harper’s Bazaar as well as the New York Photo League. In 1951, she joined the faculty of the New School for Social Research, where she told students to “Shoot from the gut.” One, in particular, listened: Diane Arbus. The Albertina exhibition focuses on Model’s off-kilter images of New Yorkers—bathers on Coney Island, jazz musicians, and old women eating lunch. —Elena Clavarino