Photographer Marjory Collins: Rebel Looking for a Cause

During the late 1930s and early 1940s, photographers hired by the U.S. government roamed the country, recording on film the realities of rural and urban America. Some of these photographers worked for the Information Division of the Farm Security Administration (FSA), documenting the drought, poverty, and despair of the Great Depression.

As the economy improved with the onset of World War II, the FSA became less important while the need for collecting and disseminating information about the war became evident. The Office of War Information (OWI) was created, incorporating the FSA Information Division and various other offices, with the goal of informing the public about the war efforts and portraying the United States in a positive manner both domestically and overseas.

Roy Stryker, head of the Historical Section of FSA Information Division, was tapped to lead the OWI Photography Division. During the course of his federal career, he hired a number of outstanding photographers, including at least four women: Dorothea Lange, Marjory Collins, Marion Post Wolcott, and Esther Bubley.

Marjory Collins
Photo Library of Congress
Collection

While Lange’s work is well-known, the other women have been less heralded. I’d like to introduce you to Marjory Collins, who called herself “a rebel looking for a cause.”

When she began her career in the 1930s, women magazine photographers were rare. Collins worked for such magazines as PM and US Camera, and her photos was represented by major agencies, including Associated Press and Time, Inc.

Shortly after the OWI was created in 1941, Collins joined the team of photographers hired to document home front activities of the war. According to the Library of Congress, Collins “created remarkable visual stories of small town life, ethnic communities, and women war workers.”

From January 1942 to June 1943, she took more than 3,000 photographs while on about 50 different assignments. Most of these are preserved in the FSA/OWI Collection in the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

Waiting for trains at Pennsylvania Station, New York City
--Marjory Collins Photo
Library of Congress FSA/OWI Collection

Stryker wanted the OWI photographs to show “visual stories about the ideal American way of life and stories that showed the commitment of ordinary citizens in supporting the war effort.”

For one assignment on women in industry, Collins was told to capture “representative types actually at work rather than posed 'cuties,'" and to show "the very important contribution made towards final victory and how they have adapted themselves to wartime conditions."

This was in contrast to another OWI objective of making wartime jobs seem glamorous to encourage more women to join the workforce. As a result, Collins received criticism from some of her fellow photographers, who wanted the OWI photographs to show only the positive aspects of American life.

One of Collins’ stories showed a young widow, whom Collins called “Mrs. Grimm,” and her six children under the age of twelve. Collins considered these images among her best work, as they portrayed “life as it really is.”

Patsy Grimm, age 6, dusting and Mary Grimm, 8, sweeping
in the front room. Their mother, a 26-year-old widow, was
 a crane operator during WWII. Buffalo, NY
--Marjory Collins Photo
Library of Congress FSA.OWI Collection

Mrs. Grimm worked as a crane operator, and the photographic story showed the family’s struggle to stay together and properly care for the younger children.

Collins left OWI in 1943 and went on to work as a freelance photographer in Alaska, Egypt, Ireland, Ethiopia, Kenya, Rwanda, and Italy for U.S. government agencies and the commercial press.

Sadly, she also married and divorced three times. In the third divorce, sometime between 1948 and 1950, her husband destroyed many of the prints and negatives from those years abroad.

Her OWI assignments had raised her social awareness. To support various causes, she became a writer and editor, as well as photojournalist. Throughout her life, she participated in such social and political causes as civil rights, Vietnam War protests, and women's movements.

Around 1970, she experienced ageism and sexism when she found herself out of a job and in need of an operation. To address the needs of mature women like herself, she founded Prime Time, the first magazine for older women. It continued until 1976 and reached a circulation of 3,000.

Collins continued to study women’s history and the role of older women in society until 1985, when she died of cancer at the age of seventy-three.

Historians consider the FSA/OWI collection one of the largest photographic projects ever. One researcher, referring specifically to the women, stated, “it can be argued that these socially conscious photographers used the camera lens and the darkroom to create images that reflected their opposition to racial, economic and gender discrimination, shaping their audience's perception as well as our historical view of injustice in American society.”*

Sources:

*Sharon Rodriguez, Women Photographers of the FSA and OWI

Marjory Collins Biographical Essay by Beverly Brannan, Women Photojournalists: Marjory Collins - Biographical Essay (Prints and Photographs Reading Room, Library of Congress)

Oral history interview with Roy Emerson Stryker, 1963-1965 | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution | Archives of American Art, Smithsonian Institution

United States Office of War Information - Wikipedia

Marjory_Collins - Wikipedia

Multi-award-winning author Marie Wells Coutu finds beauty in surprising places, like undiscovered treasures, old houses, and gnarly trees. All three books in her Mended Vessels series, contemporary stories based on the lives of biblical women, have won awards in multiple contests.

She is currently working on historical romances set in her native western Kentucky in the 1930s and 1940s. Her historical short story, “All That Glistens,” won honorable mention in the 2023 Saturday Evening Post Great American Fiction Contest. In her newsletter, she shares about her writing, historical tidbits, recommended books, and sometimes recipes.

Another historical short story tells of a cafe waitress who waits for the love of her life to come back to her after the war. “A Song for Annie,” is available free when you sign up for Marie's newsletter here.

Mary Marvin Breckinridge: One of “Murrow’s Boys”

Library of Congress.           

Not to be confused with her famous cousin of the same name who founded the Frontier Nursing Service, Mary Marvin Breckinridge chose to go through life using her middle name Marvin. Some say she also used it to fly in the face of the prejudice against woman prevalent at the time. No matter the reason, Marvin was definitely her own person.

Born October 2, 1905, into the prestigious Kentucky Breckinridge family (her great-grandfather was Vice President of the United States under James Buchanan). No slouch herself, Marvin’s mother was the daughter of industrialist B.F. Goodrich (yes, the tire people). Another cousin would go on to become Arizona’s first congresswoman.

Marvin moved so often as a child, that she attended twelve schools before graduating from Milton Academy in Massachusetts. She enrolled at Vassar College where she majored in French and minored in history. She also made a significant impression on one Edward R. Murrow when she founded the National Student Federation of America. After Vassar, she combined her love of travel with the desire to explore photography and cinematography as a career by being a postgraduate student at the Clarence White School of Photography, University of Berlin, the Catholic University of Lima, and the American University of Cairo. She also found time to become a licensed pilot during this time.

Anxious to use her cinematography skills for the greater good, in 1930 Marvin created a silent film called

Still from 
The Forgotten Frontier

 The Forgotten Frontier that tells the story of her cousin’s Frontier Nursing Service, the midwifery health service that “provided healthcare services to rural, underserved populations” in the Appalachian Mountains of Kentucky. Marvin went back on the road and traveled from Cape Town to Cairo with her friend Olivia Stokes Hatch. Successful in selling her photographs to big-name magazines such as Vogue, National Geographic, Look, Life, Town & Country, and Harper’s Bazaar, she began a career in photojournalism. For the next seven years she would visit countries and locations most people could only dream about: Palestine, Turkey, and France, to name a few.

In 1939, when he needed a radio broadcaster in Europe, CBS war correspondent Edward R. Murrow tapped Marvin. Her first assignment was to join him on air to discuss the changes war had brought to English villages. The next, a solo piece on female fire fighters. She was one of only four photographers to be in London the first several months of the war, and she photographed many pivotal moments including the first shots of an air raid shelter, and the evacuation of the city’s children during Operation Pied Piper. She was in Switzerland when Germany invaded Poland.

Library of Congress.       

She continued traveling the continent eventually making fifty reports from seven European countries, including Berlin, Germany. Clever with the turn of a phrase, one of her most famous broadcasts included a description of the official Nazi newspaper, Voelkische Beobachter: “The motto of this important official paper is Freedom and Bread. There is still bread.” Somehow German censors missed the subtle dig at their country, and the comment was permitted to be broadcast. Marvin quickly became known as one of Murrow’s Boys.

While in Germany, Marvin met Jefferson Patterson, first secretary of the United Stated embassy in Berlin. They married soon thereafter. With plans to resurrect her photojournalist career, she willingly gave up her job at CBS. Unfortunately, the State Department had other plans and wouldn’t waive the regulation censoring anything a diplomat’s spouse offered for publication. However, alway one to make the proverbial lemonade out of lemons, she turned her sights to her new career as a foreign service officer’s wife and created handbooks for foreign travelers: the Peruvian Way, Living in Egypt: From the American Angle, and At Home in Uruguay.

If money were no object, what country would you like to visit?

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Linda Shenton Matchett writes about ordinary people who did extraordinary things in days gone by. A native of Baltimore, Maryland, she was born a stone’s throw from Fort McHenry (of Star-Spangled Banner fame), and has lived in historical places all her life. Linda is a volunteer docent and archivist at the Wright Museum of WWII and a former trustee of her local public library. She lives in central New Hampshire where she enjoys exploring historic sites and immersing herself in the imaginary worlds created by other authors. Visit her at Http://www.LindaShentonMatchett.com

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