Inge Morath, Photographer With a Poetic Touch, Dies at 78
Douglas Martin www.nytimes.com douglas-martin
Inge Morath, photographer who brought whimsical, lyrical touch to her images from travelogues to reportage to portraits, dies at age 78; photos (M)
/vi-assets/static-assets/favicon-d2483f10ef688e6f89e23806b9700298.ico
Inge Morath, a photographer who brought a whimsical, lyrical touch to her images from travelogues to reportage to portraits, died yesterday at New York Hospital in Manhattan. She was 78 and lived in Roxbury, Conn.

Arthur Miller, her husband, said the cause of death was lymphoma.

''She made poetry out of people and their places over half a century,'' Mr. Miller said.

Her work included striking portraits of both posed celebrities and fleeting images of anonymous passers-by. Her feeling for places as reflected in images of Boris Pasternak's home, Chekhov's house and Mao Zedong's bedroom was so sensitive that some viewers insisted they could see invisible people.

But many critics said the pictures spoke eloquently for themselves.

''Inge Morath possesses the priceless quality of making the world look as though it had been discovered only this morning and she was present with her lens to record its bright freshness,'' Harrison E. Salisbury wrote in The New York Times Book Review about the couple's book ''In Russia'' (Viking, 1969).

In the later phases of her long career, Ms. Morath produced books with her husband: he provided words and she the pictures. Beyond their respective artistic talents, the books were enhanced by his easy access to top figures in culture and other fields and her great facility with languages. For example, she spent years learning Chinese before the couple tackled China.

In an essay in The New York Times concerning their book ''In the Country'' (Viking, 1977), Mr. Miller suggested such collaborations allowed the two to play with notions of time. ''As always, the camera sees the past -- all it can see -- and here it speaks of a symmetry of action and thought and a revolution based on empirical common sense, when in truth these people watch the television news for the event on Wall Street, in Washington or Korea that will affect the price of fertilizer and crops,'' he wrote. ''The surreal emerges from the fragility of what camera and mind can grasp as real.''

Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.

Thank you for your patience while we verify access.

Already a subscriber? Log in.

Want all of The Times? Subscribe.