tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post833654813990874851..comments2024-01-28T03:56:39.351-08:00Comments on TOM CLARK: Marion Post Wolcott: A Modern Gypsy in an AutomobileUnknownnoreply@blogger.comBlogger8125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-49040778864469526672012-02-27T18:58:45.522-08:002012-02-27T18:58:45.522-08:00Loved this, Tom. Thank you.Loved this, Tom. Thank you.Robbhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12312524900784740898noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-7901444392210701002012-02-23T19:38:28.320-08:002012-02-23T19:38:28.320-08:00Wow. That's almost like lee Miller who did eve...Wow. That's almost like lee Miller who did even more and earlier but similarly brave and accomplished and ended up living in Egypt with her Egyptian first husband etc. Where are the movies about these great ladies? (I tried to get Hollywood friends to do one on Lee Miller but never happened.)Lallyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05310472614196384595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-36637719572628262382012-02-23T07:28:18.555-08:002012-02-23T07:28:18.555-08:00Michael,
Well, there were a few scrapes and cott...Michael, <br /><br />Well, there were a few scrapes and cottonfield briars and uninvited midnight-mashing good old boys coming in over the transom... but MP made it through on sheer spirit and energy and nerve and refusal to quit; she had already come up through a "man's world" of rough & ready photojournalism, and not buckled in the face of that. Maybe being ready for anything life throws at you is a talent some have, so do not.<br /><br />It took her quite a while, but she eventually managed to convince her boss, Roy Stryker, to let her wear pants on the job. <br /><br />She stayed on with the project until marrying Lee Wolcott in June 1941 and quit government work then, took on being the mother of his two kids and became a diplomatic wife; I believe that eventually meant living in Iran, where he was U.S. ambassador if I remember correctly.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-86826446017383919592012-02-23T07:04:54.363-08:002012-02-23T07:04:54.363-08:00Let me add my accolades to Post and to you Tom for...Let me add my accolades to Post and to you Tom for sharing her and her work with all who follow your blog. Having been stationed in the service in 1962 in South Carolina at a time when there was total segregation even worse than Mississippi and Alabama, where at least there was some Civil Rights activity that was registering with the public, and venturing into similar places where I was suspect and often threatened (had knives held to my throat and once was shot at) I can't imagine a woman that age (I was nineteen and twenty at the time) more than twenty years earlier being so brave and accomplishing so much. Miraculous really that she made it through unharmed, which maybe I'm assuming she did.Lallyhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05310472614196384595noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-30313233733385216272012-02-22T07:58:36.774-08:002012-02-22T07:58:36.774-08:00Curtis,
I'm not sure Post's subjects woul...Curtis,<br /><br />I'm not sure Post's subjects would have known an ethnologist from an extraterrestrial. In fact, from her letters back to Washington, the impression is given they considered her closer to the latter. Pretty white women just were not supposed to look that way, dress that way, drive that kind of car, carry that kind of equipment, & c. -- much less act so forwardly as to walk right into their lives and show an interest.<br /><br />But she was a bright, strong, idealistic young woman, her mother had worked with Margaret Sanger, she had been at the University of Vienna in the 1930s when the Nazis were coming to power, she believed strongly in what she was doing, and if she erred on the side of boldness, certainly nobody was harmed by that; and in the event, many Americans, thanks to Post's photos, got their first real look at what the colours of the landscapes and the people actually were, way down south of the Mason-Dixon line.TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-89512258420506193642012-02-22T03:28:58.440-08:002012-02-22T03:28:58.440-08:00It's impossible to write all I'm thinking,...It's impossible to write all I'm thinking, but this is a remarkable assemblage, for which both you and Marion Post Wolcott deserve a lot of credit. For several years (not that long ago), I worked for a company that operated a large plant in Arkansas and had my first opportunity to visit there. People were surprised when I said that visiting Arkansas (and this included Little Rock, by the way, a lovely and perfectly "civilized" place) I felt further away from the U.S. I knew than I did when I visited China. Marion Post Wolcott certainly was a great artist and her account of her work and the attitude of the people she photographed and their behavior toward her is fascinating. I fully understand their fear and depression, but also the fact that as people needing to survive they animated themselves to get through the days heading in some sort of unknown direction. They actually seem realer to me in these stories than most people I run into every day, who bore you to no end about their supposed intentions and agendas. I don't think I would wish to be photographed, however, by a visiting ethnologist/photographer, no matter how talented, charming, sincere and pretty she was or noble her intentions. But perhaps that's just me. CurtisACravanhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00315707533118640284noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-25238877760017511882012-02-22T01:15:40.870-08:002012-02-22T01:15:40.870-08:00Steve,
I think she was a great artist. She had a ...Steve,<br /><br />I think she was a great artist. She had a natural love of landscapes and an instinctive understanding of the both-ways relations between the landscapes and the people who live upon them. She had a lot of smarts and plenty of moxie to stick it out on what was not an easy road. Roy Stryker gave her the toughest Deep South assignments, on the hunch she'd "feel" the place better than anybody else; and she was also allowed a pretty good share of the scarce color stock, which of course allowed her to show her mastery with light: very bright light and very deep shade, in strong contrast, for powerful light-and-shade effects (as seen e.g. in her shots of Negro migratory workers and pickers around their palm-shaded ramshackle living quarters in Belle Glade, Florida) that sometimes resemble chiaroscuro. (An in-house expert pronounces that "they're just underexposed," but then aesthetics is always in the eye of the beholder, and moreover one who is slowly going blind cannot afford to grow too bold in such friendly colloquia.)TChttps://www.blogger.com/profile/05915822857461178942noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-4445844569294316288.post-64769286229667783592012-02-21T10:11:47.673-08:002012-02-21T10:11:47.673-08:00Tom,
Hats off to Marion Post -- what amazing work...Tom,<br /><br />Hats off to Marion Post -- what amazing work! under such 'circumstances' ("Several times when I’ve had the car parked along side the road and taken pix nearby, a cop or state trooper has come up, watched me, examined the cameras and searched through the car, and questioned and looked at all my identification, etc.,” . . . The bastards can take their own sweet time about it and ask many irrelevant and sometimes personal and slightly impertinent questions too.” . . . “They haven’t anything else to do and they don’t feel like working anyway it’s too hot, and they think you’re crazy anyhow.” <br /><br />2.21<br /><br />grey whiteness of fog against invisible<br />ridge, song sparrow calling from branch<br />in foreground, wave sounding in channel<br /><br /> first full-fledged “assault”<br /> on the subject, shown<br /><br /> that which speaks what sees,<br /> being seen, is seeing<br /><br />grey white clouds reflected in channel,<br />shadowed green slope of ridge above itSTEPHEN RATCLIFFEhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/12339481653546188412noreply@blogger.com