Born 1910 in New Jersey, American photographer Marion 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.
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.
Post’s photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humor in the situations she encountered.
In 1978, Post mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to collect her photographs. Marion Post’s work is archived at the Center for Creative Photography at the University of Arizona in Tucson, Arizona.
Marion Post died in 1990 at the age of 80. These amazing photos are part of her work that she documented life of the U.S. from 1938 to 1941.
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| Cooperative gas station at Greenbelt, Maryland, September 1938 |
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| A FSA (Farm Security Administration) borrower building a new gate for his yard at Prairie Farms, Montgomery, Alabama, 1939 |
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| A rainy evening in New York City looking west toward Hudson River from University Place, September 1939 |
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| A rainy evening in New York City, looking north from University Place, September 1939 |
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| Beach bathers at Miami Beach, Florida, 1939 |
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