• Visual Art

Marion Post Wolcott

b. 1910- d. 1990

Marion Post Wolcott is best known for the photographs she produced for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) during 1938 – 1942. She created thousands of photographs of people and places in New England, Kentucky, North Carolina, Florida, Louisiana and Mississippi. Post Wolcott was born in New Jersey and studied in New York, Paris, and Vienna. Her work as a photographer challenged gendered social norms of the time. As a woman, it was unusual for her to work as she did – independently traveling around the country meeting and photographing people she did not know. She worked as a press photographer in New York and Philadelphia before working as a photographer for the FSA. It was as a press photographer at the Philadelphia Evening Bulletin, where Post Wolcott said she earned her “battle scars.” At the paper, the male staff photographers gave her a hard time for being a female photographer. But, she stood up to them and told them she “was there to stay . . . and we reached a truce.”

Digital Archive

Marion Post photographing mountain children on stone steps of their home. Up Stinking Creek, Pine Mountain, Kentucky by Marie Turner

Source: Farm Security Administration - Office of War Information Photograph Collection, Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.

1940

Marion Post, Press Credentials Photograph

Source: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C.

1940

Marion Post Wolcott

Source: Marion Post Wolcott Estate