1940s Black and White Photography

Photo is 9X13.5 (image size), 16X20 is the mat. Mounted to original mat. Vintage photograph. Marion Post (June 7, 1910 – November 24, 1990), later Marion Post Wolcott, was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. Marion Post was born in New Jersey on June 7, 1910. Her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met many artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School. Post trained as a teacher, and went to work in a small town in Massachusetts. Here she saw the reality of the Depression and the problems of the poor. When the school closed she went to Europe to study with her sister Helen. Helen was studying with Trude Fleischmann, a Viennese photographer. Marion Post showed Fleischmann some of her photographs and was told to stick to photography. Marion Post Wolcott with Rolleiflex and Speed Graphic in hand in Montgomery County, Maryland. While in Vienna she saw some of the Nazi attacks on the Jewish population and was horrified. Soon she and her sister had to return to America 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 and Paul Strand who encouraged her. When she found that the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin kept sending her to do "ladies' stories," Ralph Steiner took her portfolio to show Roy Stryker, 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 under Franklin Roosevelt. They married, and she continued her assignments for the FSA, but resigned shortly thereafter in February 1942. She 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 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 began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on her work was published in 1983. She 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.) She and other FSA WPA photographers, including Esther Bubley...

Candidate for U.S. Vice Presidency Acknowledges Ovation is a black and white photo realized in 1944. In acknowledgement of the ovation accorded senator Harry S. Truman by cheering delegates a the Democratic Party...

Morris Rosenfeld: 1885-1968. Well listed American photographer. Famous for photos of sail boats, yachts and other seafaring vessels. He has an auction...

The work offered for sale here is an original vintage silver gelatin print hand created by Halsman in 1944 and exhibited at the International Center for Photography. Philippe Halsman was at one point considered the best photo-portraitist in France. He had an incessant interest in faces: “Every face I see seems to hide—and sometimes fleetingly reveal—the mystery of another human being.” Halsman’s photographs of politicians, celebrities, and intellectuals were featured widely in magazines like LIFE and Vogue. His more famous subjects included the likes of Marc Chagall, Le Corbusier, Audrey Hepburn, and Albert Einstein. He also had a 37-year collaboration with Salvador Dalí, which resulted in several famous surrealist series including the “Dalí’s Mustache” portraits...