Matuschka

She was hired by Chase Maintenance Cab Company on West 47th Street during New York's most turbulent crime ridden years.

Matuschka, (born March 19, 1954) is an American–Ukrainian photographer, artist, author, activist, and model.

In 1968, when Matuschka was 13, her mother died of breast cancer.

Six months after her Mother's death, Matuschka ran away from home, changed her name to “Lisa Cross” and began working as a cocktail waitress in Far Rockaway, New York.

A year later "Lisa Cross" returned to New Jersey, became a ward of the State of New Jersey and was placed in foster care.

In 1970, Matuschka, 15, was adopted by the Marco family of Paramus, New Jersey.

Anton Marco was an opera singer who toured Europe with Marlene Dietrich during the World War II, appeared in Woody Allen's film Zelig.

and later gave Matuschka singing lessons in his music salon.

His wife, Mourine Marco—a Special Ed teacher—recognized Matuschka's raw talent and enrolled her in art classes, provided books from the local library, and suggested she become a life-sketching model.

Mrs. Marco also urged her to visit museums and galleries in New York City, encouraged her to keep a journal, write poetry, document her dreams, and scribe her memoirs.

That same summer, Matuschka and her foster sister went skinny dipping in Mahwah, New Jersey where they had a chance encounter with a photographer.

An unexpected shoot followed and the pictures taken that day of Matuschka, began her modeling and photography career simultaneously at age 16.

In 1973 she had her first solo art exhibition of figurative works at the Lenox Library, which was reviewed in The Berkshire Eagle.

As a teenager, Matuschka worked as a waitress, maid, house painter, wood splitter, electrician, fully attired Go-Go dancer, nude model, art assistant, and photo retoucher.

Matuschka lived in Lenox next to Tanglewood and close to Alice's Restaurant where she met Ray and Alice Brock, attending several of their classic Thanksgiving Dinners, she befriended photographers Gerard Malanga and Don Snyder.

Don Snyder would go on to become Matuschka's mentor as she became his muse and mentee for the next 30 years.

During the two years she lived in the Berkshires, Matuschka worked as a photography/gallery assistant and apprentice to photojournalist Clemens Kalischer of The Image Gallery in Stockbridge, Massachusetts.

She also posed for life sketching classes and regional artists and also taught life sketching at Windsor Mountain.

Matuschka's work as both a model and photographic assistant was essential to her development both behind the camera and in front of one.

In the mid 70s' Snyder introduced her to William Silano in NYC and working alongside these two photographers, she learned the art of chemically toning and manipulating prints in the darkroom.

It is during this time that Matuschka began photographing herself in black and white on 35 mm film.

Matuschka was enrolled for the 1973 fall semester at Washington University in St. Louis, Missouri, but at the last minute decided to matriculate at Prescott College—a small, private, liberal, school in Arizona founded by the Ford Foundation.

At Prescott, she designed an independent curriculum with a variety of regional artists specializing in architecture.

Her field studies brought her to the works and sites of Paolo Soleri, Frank Lloyd Wright, and Antoni Gaudi.

Matuschka frequented Native American Ruins in addition to Arcosanti, Cosanti, and Taliesin West—all a short distance from campus.

After taking the course of George Bruce at Prescott, she was invited by Bruce to publish her poetry in a Scottish Anthology called Arkos, which he edited.

He selected a suite of Matuschka's poems entitled Visions from a Locked Ward for the 1974 edition.

Matuschka had her second solo show entitled The Tragedy of a Space Condemned at the Bofus Gallery at Prescott College which was reviewed in the Prescott Courier in 1974.

This was the beginning of the artist's interest in combining text and imagery.

Prescott College went bankrupt at that time, and Matuschka transferred to the School of Visual Arts(SVA) in New York City the following year.

At SVA, Matuschka studied with painters Jennifer Bartlett and Frank Roth.

At night she pushed a hack, becoming one of the first and most likely youngest females—or individuals—to drive for a commercial taxi fleet at night.

The artist has been nominated for many awards, including a Pulitzer Prize, and has received dozens of citations, honors, and distinctions for her photographic works, and activism since the early 1990s.

Her self-portrait on the Sunday cover of New York Times magazine in 1993 was chosen by LIFE for a special edition entitled 100 Photographs that Changed the World published in 2003 and again in 2011.

Although Mrs. Marco and Matuschka would share a special relationship until the elder's death in 2005, Matuschka would go on to live in three more foster homes before the Bureau of Children's Services made a decision to send her to Windsor Mountain School, a boarding school located in Lenox Massachusetts in 1971.

Windsor Mountain School was a private Prep School in the Berkshires and was known for its progressive, experiential learning, and multi-cultural student body.

It is at Windsor Mountain School that Jan Wiener, a European History teacher, gave the aspiring artist and model the nickname "Matuschka"—a version of Motichka—which sounded much like her idol, the model "Veruschka".

At Windsor Mountain Matuschka excelled in the arts, winning the Art Prize at graduation and showed interest in photography as an art form.

In 2012 Matuschka appeared in Rose Hartman's book Incomparable Women of Style, and in 2011 John Loengard included her in his monograph: The Age of Silver: Encounters with Great Photographers.

Matuschka was born in Newton, New Jersey to a policeman at the George Washington Bridge and a mother, who was a farm hand from Allamuchy, New Jersey.