Wolcott, Marion Post

American, 1910-1990

BiographyMarion Post Wolcott was a documentary photographer who made candid images of rural poverty during the Great Depression. She was one of few women hired by the Farm Security Administration (FSA) to help create a visual documentation on the long-term impact of deprivation, governmental neglect, and racial disparity. The project ran from 1935-1944 and the resulting photographs were disseminated nationally to personify the landscape of poverty and highlight the necessity for federal aid. Wolcott worked alongside and was succeeded by the likes of Dorothea Lange, Gordon Parks, and Walker Evans. The images in the Museum of Contemporary Photography permanent collection—Alabama, March and Sarasota Trailer Park, guests, Fla., Jan. ’41—were made during her time with the FSA between 1938-1942.

Marion Post Wolcott was educated in teaching and child psychology at The New School and the University of Vienna. After graduating in 1932, she remained in Europe with her sister, where she was encouraged by photographer Trude Fleischmann to stick with photography. Wolcott and her sister left Vienna to escape Nazi occupation and returned to New York in 1934. She became involved in the anti-fascist movement and continued to take photographs, both as a freelancer and as a photojournalist for the Philadelphia Bulletin. She started attending lectures and workshops with the New York Photo League where she met Ralph Steiner who recommended her to the FSA. She resigned from the FSA in 1942 to raise her family, but continued to make photographs of her daily life, friends, and travels.

Wolcott’s work has been exhibited by Museum of Modern Art, New York; Smithsonian Museum of American Art, Washington D.C.; Getty Center, Los Angeles; and others. She is in the permanent collections of International Center of Photography, New York; Library of Congress, Washington D.C.; Museum of Fine Arts, Houston; and more.