Marion Post Wolcott

from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Marion Post Wolcott, 1940

Marion Post (later Marion Post Wolcott ) (born June 7, 1910 in Montclair , New Jersey ; † November 24, 1990 in Santa Barbara , California ) was an American documentary photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the so-called Great Depression , Documented poverty and deprivation of the population.

Life

In her mother, Marion (Nan) Hoyt Post's house, in Greenwich Village , Marion Post met many artists and musicians and became interested in modern dance. She studied at the New School in New York to become a teacher. After completing her education, Marion Post started working in a small town in Massachusetts . Here she was confronted with the reality of the Great Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school was closed, Post went to Europe in 1932, first to Paris, then to Vienna to study with her sister Helen. Helen studied with Trude Fleischmann , a Viennese photographer. Post showed Fleischmann some of her work and they advised her to keep taking photos.

During her time in Vienna , Post witnessed attacks by the National Socialists on Jews and soon afterwards went back to the USA with her sister. Here she was involved in the anti-fascist movement American League Against War and Fascism , which supported Jews, including Trude Fleischmann, in fleeing Europe to the United States.

Marion Post started working as a freelance photographer in 1936 and got in touch with the New York group Photo League , where she met Ralph Steiner (1899–1986) and Paul Strand . When she found that the Philadelphia Bulletin , among others , kept sending her on "women" topics, Ralph Steiner showed her portfolio to Roy Stryker (1893–1975), head of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), and Paul Strand wrote a letter of recommendation. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her in 1938. Like Walker Evans , Dorothea Lange , Russell Lee , Gordon Parks , Louise Rosskam, and Arthur Rothstein , Post for the FSA began traveling through rural areas of the United States and welfare recipients, migrant workers, and over and over again Portraying children.

In 1941 she met Lee Wolcott, assistant to then Secretary of Agriculture Henry Wallace . After her duties for the FSA were done, she married him and subordinated her photography to family life and many overseas trips.

Her photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation and make up part of the FSA's extensive image archive. Marion Post Wolcott's work for the FSA has been widely collected, exhibited, and published and is part of the permanent collections of most major museums in the United States and abroad.

African American children in Wadesboro, North Carolina . Photographed by Marion Post, 1938.

literature

  • The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott . Library of Congress, Washington, DC 2008
  • Paul Hendrickson: Looking for the Light: The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott . Knopf, New York 1992
  • F. Jack Hurley: Marion Post Wolcott: A Photographic Journey . University of New Mexico Press, Albuquerque 1989
  • Marion Post Wolcott: Marion Post Wolcott, FSA Photographs . Friends of Photography, Carmel (CA) 1983
  • Colleen McDannell: Picturing Faith: Photography and the Great Depression . Yale University Press, 2004
  • Melissa A. McEuen: Marion Post's Portrayal of Collective Strength In: Seeing America: Women Photographers Between the Wars , The University Press of Kentucky, 2004

Web links

Commons : Marion Post Wolcott  - Collection of Images, Videos and Audio Files
personal data
SURNAME Wolcott, Marion Post
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Post Wolcott, Marion; Post, Marion (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American documentary photographer
DATE OF BIRTH June 7, 1910
PLACE OF BIRTH Montclair , New Jersey
DATE OF DEATH November 24, 1990
Place of death Santa Barbara , California