Marion Post Wolcott (June 7, 1910 – November 24, 1990) was an American

photographer A photographer (the Greek language, Greek φῶς (''phos''), meaning "light", and γραφή (''graphê''), meaning "drawing, writing", together meaning "drawing with light") is a person who makes photographs. Duties and types of photographe ...

who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the

Great Depression The Great Depression (19291939) was an economic shock that impacted most countries across the world. It was a period of economic depression that became evident after a major fall in stock prices in the United States. The economic contagio ...

documenting

poverty Poverty is the state of having few material possessions or little income. Poverty can have diverse social, economic, and political causes and effects. When evaluating poverty in ...

, the

Jim Crow The Jim Crow laws were state and local laws enforcing racial segregation in the Southern United States. Other areas of the United States were affected by formal and informal policies of segregation as well, but many states outside the Sout ...

South, and deprivation.

Early life

Marion Post was born in

Montclair, New Jersey Montclair () is a township in Essex County in the U.S. state of New Jersey. Situated on the cliffs of the Watchung Mountains, Montclair is a wealthy and diverse commuter town and suburb of New York City within the New York metropolitan area. As ...

on June 7, 1910, to Marion ( Hoyt; known as "Nan") and Walter Post, a physician.Francine Prose, "Introduction" in She grew up in the family home in Bloomfield, the younger of two daughters in the Post family. Her parents divorced when she was thirteen and she was sent to

boarding school A boarding school is a school where pupils live within premises while being given formal instruction. The word "boarding" is used in the sense of "room and board", i.e. lodging and meals. As they have existed for many centuries, and now exten ...

, spending time at home with her mother in

Greenwich Village Greenwich Village ( , , ) is a neighborhood on the west side of Lower Manhattan in New York City, bounded by 14th Street to the north, Broadway to the east, Houston Street to the south, and the Hudson River to the west. Greenwich Village ...

when not at school. Here she met many artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at

The New School The New School is a private research university in New York City. It was founded in 1919 as The New School for Social Research with an original mission dedicated to academic freedom and intellectual inquiry and a home for progressive thinkers. ...

. Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in

Massachusetts Massachusetts (Massachusett language, Massachusett: ''Muhsachuweesut assachusett writing systems, məhswatʃəwiːsət'' English: , ), officially the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, is the most populous U.S. state, state in the New England ...

. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school closed she went to

Europe Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia ...

to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with

Trude Fleischmann Trude Fleischmann (22 December 1895 – 21 January 1990) was an Austrian-born American photographer. After becoming a notable society photographer in Vienna in the 1920s, she re-established her business in New York in 1940. Early life Born in Vi ...

, a Viennese photographer. Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography.

Career

While in

Vienna en, Viennese , iso_code = AT-9 , registration_plate = W , postal_code_type = Postal code , postal_code = , timezone = CET , utc_offset = +1 , timezone_DST ...

she saw some of the

Nazi Nazism ( ; german: Nazismus), the common name in English for National Socialism (german: Nationalsozialismus, ), is the far-right totalitarian political ideology and practices associated with Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party (NSDAP) in ...

attacks on the

Jewish Jews ( he, יְהוּדִים, , ) or Jewish people are an ethnoreligious group and nation originating from the Israelites Israelite origins and kingdom: "The first act in the long drama of Jewish history is the age of the Israelites""The ...

population and was horrified. Soon she and her sister had to return to

America The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 states, a federal district, five major unincorporated territorie ...

for safety. She went back to teaching but also continued her photography and became involved in the anti-fascist movement. At the New York Photo League she met

Ralph Steiner Ralph Steiner (February 8, 1899 – July 13, 1986) was an American photographer, pioneer documentarian and a key figure among avant-garde filmmakers in the 1930s. Photographer Born in Cleveland, Steiner studied chemistry at Dartmouth, but in ...

and

Paul Strand Paul Strand (October 16, 1890 – March 31, 1976) was an American photographer and filmmaker who, along with fellow modernist photographers like Alfred Stieglitz and Edward Weston, helped establish photography as an art form in the 20th century. ...

who encouraged her. When she found that the ''

Philadelphia Evening Bulletin The ''Philadelphia Bulletin'' was a daily evening newspaper published from 1847 to 1982 in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. It was the largest circulation newspaper in Philadelphia for 76 years and was once the largest evening newspaper in the United ...

'' kept sending her to do "ladies' stories", Ralph Steiner took her portfolio to show

Roy Stryker Roy Emerson Stryker (November 5, 1893 – September 27, 1975) was an American economist, government official, and photographer. He headed the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during the Great Depression, and launc ...

, head of the Farm Security Administration, and Paul Strand wrote a letter of recommendation. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately. Post's photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered. In 1941 she met Leon Oliver Wolcott, deputy director of war relations for the

U. S. Department of Agriculture The United States Department of Agriculture (USDA) is the United States federal executive departments, federal executive department responsible for developing and executing federal laws related to farming, forestry, rural economic development, ...

under

Franklin Roosevelt Franklin Delano Roosevelt (; ; January 30, 1882April 12, 1945), often referred to by his initials FDR, was an American politician and attorney who served as the 32nd president of the United States from 1933 until his death in 1945. As the ...

. They married, and Marion Post Wolcott continued her assignments for the FSA, but resigned shortly thereafter in February 1942. Wolcott found it difficult to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas. In the 1970s, a renewed interest in Post Wolcott's images among scholars rekindled her own interest in photography. In 1978, Wolcott mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the

Metropolitan Museum of Art The Metropolitan Museum of Art of New York City, colloquially "the Met", is the largest art museum in the Americas. Its permanent collection contains over two million works, divided among 17 curatorial departments. The main building at 1000 ...

began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on Marion Post Wolcott's work was published in 1983. Wolcott was an advocate for women's rights; in 1986, Wolcott said: "Women have come a long way, but not far enough. . . . Speak with your images from your heart and soul" (Women in Photography Conference, Syracuse, N.Y.). Post Wolcott's work is archived at the Library of Congress and the

Center for Creative Photography The Center for Creative Photography (CCP), established in 1975 and located on the University of Arizona's Tucson campus, is a research facility and archival repository containing the full archives of over sixty of the most famous American pho ...

at the

University of Arizona The University of Arizona (Arizona, U of A, UArizona, or UA) is a public land-grant research university in Tucson, Arizona. Founded in 1885 by the 13th Arizona Territorial Legislature, it was the first university in the Arizona Territory. T ...

Tucson, Arizona , "(at the) base of the black ill , nicknames = "The Old Pueblo", "Optics Valley", "America's biggest small town" , image_map = , mapsize = 260px , map_caption = Interactive map ...

Death

Post Wolcott died of lung cancer in

Santa Barbara, California Santa Barbara ( es, Santa Bárbara, meaning "Saint Barbara") is a coastal city in Santa Barbara County, California, of which it is also the county seat. Situated on a south-facing section of coastline, the longest such section on the West Coas ...

, on November 24, 1990.

Gallery

All photographs are by Marion Post Wolcott. Children in Wadesboro.jpg,

African American African Americans (also referred to as Black Americans and Afro-Americans) are an ethnic group consisting of Americans with partial or total ancestry from sub-Saharan Africa. The term "African American" generally denotes descendants of ens ...

children from Wadesboro,

North Carolina North Carolina () is a state in the Southeastern region of the United States. The state is the 28th largest and 9th-most populous of the United States. It is bordered by Virginia to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the east, Georgia and So ...

, 1938. Negro home Marion Post Wolcott.jpg, "Negro Home near Charleston, South Carolina", 1938. Ada Turner and Evelyn M. Driver Home Management.jpg, "Ada Turner and Evelyn M. Driver Home Management", 1939. File:SAAM-1998.120.57 2.jpg, "Two Negro women carrying packages, one has a box of surplus relief commodities on her head. Natchez, Mississippi", 1940 FSA JukeJoint.jpg, A

juke joint Juke joint (also jukejoint, jook house, jook, or juke) is the vernacular term for an informal establishment featuring music, dancing, gambling, and drinking, primarily operated by African Americans in the southeastern United States. A juke joint ...

located in Belle Glade,

Florida Florida is a state located in the Southeastern region of the United States. Florida is bordered to the west by the Gulf of Mexico, to the northwest by Alabama, to the north by Georgia, to the east by the Bahamas and Atlantic Ocean, and to ...

, 1944.

Bibliography

* Hendrickson, Paul. ''Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott''. New York: Knopf, 1992. * Hurley, F. Jack. ''Marion Post Wolcott: A Photographic Journey''. Albuquerque: University of New Mexico Press, 1989. * Wolcott-Moore, Linda, ed. ''The Photography of Marion Post Wolcott ''Website created by Wolcott's daughter, hosted on J. David Sapir's site ''Fixing Shadows'', available online: http://people.virginia.edu/~ds8s/mpw/mpw-bio.html, 1999. * Wolcott, Marion Post. ''Marion Post Wolcott, FSA Photographs''. Carmel, CA: Friends of Photography, 1983. * Prose, Francine, ''The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott''. Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 2008,

References

External links

Interview
in
Frontline Diplomacy: The Foreign Affairs Oral History Collection of the Association for Diplomatic Studies and Training

* ttps://www.flickr.com/photos/library_of_congress/sets/72157603671370361/ FSA Photos, including many by Wolcott, posted by Library of Congress on Flickr Commons Website
Oral history interview with Marion Post Wolcott, 1965 Jan. 18, Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution
{{DEFAULTSORT:Post Wolcott, Marion 20th-century American photographers People from Bloomfield, New Jersey People from Montclair, New Jersey Photographers from New Jersey 1990 deaths 1910 births 20th-century American women photographers