Maria LaYacona (1926–2019) was an American-born photographer who worked primarily in Jamaica. For its first three decades, she was the official photographer for the country's National Dance Theatre Company.

Early life

LaYacona's parents emigrated from Italy to America and she was born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County, Ohio, Cuyahoga County. Located along the southern shore of Lake Erie, it is situated across the Canada–United States border, Canada–U.S. maritime border ...

, on 18 November 1926. Her father ran a portrait studio from the family home and she and her brother both assisted him in his darkroom. She studied at the Winona School of Professional Photography in Winona Lake, Indiana, before moving to New York City in 1950 where she supported herself by taking photographs for publicity shots and society weddings. She worked as a photojournalist for ''

Time Time is the continuous progression of existence that occurs in an apparently irreversible process, irreversible succession from the past, through the present, and into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequ ...

'' and ''

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'' and, in 1955 accepted an assignment from ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with a circulation of over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellen ...

'', traveling to Jamaica to shoot the test series between

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and the

West Indies The West Indies is an island subregion of the Americas, surrounded by the Atlantic Ocean, North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, which comprises 13 independent island country, island countries and 19 dependent territory, dependencies in thr ...

at Sabina Park. She was entranced by the country and returned the same year and spent the rest of her life in Jamaica.

Career in Jamaica

To support herself, she accepted jobs for advertisements and tourism promotion and introduced school photography packages to the country, but her passion was portraiture. Her portrait of Prime Minister

Michael Manley Michael Norman Manley (10 December 1924 – 6 March 1997) was a Jamaican politician who served as the fourth prime minister of Jamaica, from 1972 to 1980, and from 1989 to 1992. Manley championed a democratic socialist program, and has been ...

appears on the $1,000 banknote. She photographed artists and politicians, as well as everyday Jamaicans—fisherman at work, and children playing. In 1964, two years after its founding, she joined the National Dance Theatre Company as official photographer, a position she retained until her retirement in 1992. Her photographs of the dancers were published in two books, ''Roots and Rhythms'' (1969) and ''Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity'' (1985). Several of her dance photographs were also featured on Jamaican postage stamps. She was founder of the Colour Photography Club, which was to become the Jamaica Photography Society. By 2000 LaYacona had retired to a townhouse in Kingston. She died on 28 April 2019.

Publications

*''Roots and Rhythms'' (1969) *''Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity'' (1985) *''Jamaica Portraits'' (1998) *''Jamaica Reverie'' (2006)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Layacona, Maria 1926 births 2019 deaths Photographers from Ohio Jamaican photographers Jamaican women photographers 20th-century American women photographers 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American women photographers 21st-century American photographers Dance photographers American portrait photographers