1.
Columbia University
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Columbia University is a private Ivy League research university in Upper Manhattan, New York City. It was established in 1754 as Kings College by royal charter of George II of Great Britain, after the American Revolutionary War, Kings College briefly became a state entity, and was renamed Columbia College in 1784. Columbia is one of the fourteen founding members of the Association of American Universities and was the first school in the United States to grant the M. D. degree. The university also has global research outposts in Amman, Beijing, Istanbul, Paris, Mumbai, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago, Asunción, Columbia administers annually the Pulitzer Prize. Additionally,100 Nobel laureates have been affiliated with Columbia as students, researchers, faculty, Columbia is second only to Harvard University in the number of Nobel Prize-winning affiliates, with over 100 recipients of the award as of 2016. In 1746 an act was passed by the assembly of New York to raise funds for the foundation of a new college. Classes were initially held in July 1754 and were presided over by the colleges first president, Dr. Johnson was the only instructor of the colleges first class, which consisted of a mere eight students. Instruction was held in a new schoolhouse adjoining Trinity Church, located on what is now lower Broadway in Manhattan, in 1763, Dr. Johnson was succeeded in the presidency by Myles Cooper, a graduate of The Queens College, Oxford, and an ardent Tory. In the charged political climate of the American Revolution, his opponent in discussions at the college was an undergraduate of the class of 1777. The suspension continued through the occupation of New York City by British troops until their departure in 1783. The colleges library was looted and its sole building requisitioned for use as a hospital first by American. Loyalists were forced to abandon their Kings College in New York, the Loyalists, led by Bishop Charles Inglis fled to Windsor, Nova Scotia, where they founded Kings Collegiate School. After the Revolution, the college turned to the State of New York in order to restore its vitality, the Legislature agreed to assist the college, and on May 1,1784, it passed an Act for granting certain privileges to the College heretofore called Kings College. The Regents finally became aware of the colleges defective constitution in February 1787 and appointed a revision committee, in April of that same year, a new charter was adopted for the college, still in use today, granting power to a private board of 24 Trustees. On May 21,1787, William Samuel Johnson, the son of Dr. Samuel Johnson, was unanimously elected President of Columbia College, prior to serving at the university, Johnson had participated in the First Continental Congress and been chosen as a delegate to the Constitutional Convention. The colleges enrollment, structure, and academics stagnated for the majority of the 19th century, with many of the college presidents doing little to change the way that the college functioned. In 1857, the college moved from the Kings College campus at Park Place to a primarily Gothic Revival campus on 49th Street and Madison Avenue, during the last half of the 19th century, under the leadership of President F. A. P. Barnard, the institution assumed the shape of a modern university
2.
United States
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Forty-eight of the fifty states and the federal district are contiguous and located in North America between Canada and Mexico. The state of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east, the state of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean. The U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean, the geography, climate and wildlife of the country are extremely diverse. At 3.8 million square miles and with over 324 million people, the United States is the worlds third- or fourth-largest country by area, third-largest by land area. It is one of the worlds most ethnically diverse and multicultural nations, paleo-Indians migrated from Asia to the North American mainland at least 15,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century, the United States emerged from 13 British colonies along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the following the Seven Years War led to the American Revolution. On July 4,1776, during the course of the American Revolutionary War, the war ended in 1783 with recognition of the independence of the United States by Great Britain, representing the first successful war of independence against a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, after the Articles of Confederation, the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, were ratified in 1791 and designed to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties. During the second half of the 19th century, the American Civil War led to the end of slavery in the country. By the end of century, the United States extended into the Pacific Ocean. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the status as a global military power. The end of the Cold War and the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the sole superpower. The U. S. is a member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States. The United States is a developed country, with the worlds largest economy by nominal GDP. It ranks highly in several measures of performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP. While the U. S. economy is considered post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge economy, the United States is a prominent political and cultural force internationally, and a leader in scientific research and technological innovations. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America after the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci
3.
Photographer
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A photographer is a person who makes photographs. As in other arts, the definitions of amateur and professional are not entirely categorical, a professional photographer is likely to take photographs to make money, by salary or through the display, sale or use of those photographs. An amateur photographer may take photographs for pleasure and to record an event, emotion, place, as a person without a monetary motivation. A professional photographer may be an employee, for example of a newspaper, or may contract to cover a planned event such as a wedding or graduation. Others, including paparazzi and fine art photographers, are freelancers, first making a picture, some workers, such as crime scene detectives, estate agents, journalists and scientists, make photographs as part of other work. Photographers who produce moving rather than still pictures are often called cinematographers, videographers or camera operators, an amateur may make considerable sums entering work in contests for prize money or through occasional inclusion of their work in magazines or the archive of a photo agency. The term professional may also imply preparation, for example, by academic study, Photographers are also categorized based on the subjects they photograph. Some photographers explore subjects typical of such as landscape, still life. The exclusive right of photographers to copy and use their products is protected by copyright, countless industries purchase photographs for use in publications and on products. This is usually referred to as usage fee and is used to distinguish from production fees, an additional contract and royalty would apply for each additional use of the photograph. The contract may be for one year, or other duration. The photographer usually charges a royalty as well as a one-time fee, the contract may be for non-exclusive use of the photograph or for exclusive use of the photograph. The contract can also stipulate that the photographer is entitled to audit the company for determination of royalty payments. A royalty is also based on the size at which the photo will be used in a magazine or book. Photos taken by a photographer working on assignment are often work for hire belonging to the company or publication unless stipulated otherwise by contract. There are major companies who have maintained catalogues of stock photography and images for decades, such as Getty Images, commercial photographers may also promote their work to advertising and editorial art buyers via printed and online marketing vehicles. Many people upload their photographs to social networking websites and other websites and those interested in legal precision may explicitly release them to the public domain or under a free content license. Some sites, including Wikimedia Commons, are punctilious about licenses, the dictionary definition of photographer at Wiktionary Media related to Photographers at Wikimedia Commons
4.
Jews
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The Jews, also known as the Jewish people, are an ethnoreligious group originating from the Israelites, or Hebrews, of the Ancient Near East. Jews originated as a national and religious group in the Middle East during the second millennium BCE, the Merneptah Stele appears to confirm the existence of a people of Israel, associated with the god El, somewhere in Canaan as far back as the 13th century BCE. The Israelites, as an outgrowth of the Canaanite population, consolidated their hold with the emergence of the Kingdom of Israel, some consider that these Canaanite sedentary Israelites melded with incoming nomadic groups known as Hebrews. The worldwide Jewish population reached a peak of 16.7 million prior to World War II, but approximately 6 million Jews were systematically murdered during the Holocaust. Since then the population has risen again, and as of 2015 was estimated at 14.3 million by the Berman Jewish DataBank. According to the report, about 43% of all Jews reside in Israel and these numbers include all those who self-identified as Jews in a socio-demographic study or were identified as such by a respondent in the same household. The exact world Jewish population, however, is difficult to measure, Israel is the only country where Jews form a majority of the population. The modern State of Israel was established as a Jewish state and defines itself as such in its Declaration of Independence and its Law of Return grants the right of citizenship to any Jew who requests it. The English word Jew continues Middle English Gyw, Iewe, according to the Hebrew Bible, the name of both the tribe and kingdom derive from Judah, the fourth son of Jacob. The Hebrew word for Jew, יְהוּדִי ISO 259-3 Yhudi, is pronounced, with the stress on the syllable, in Israeli Hebrew. The Ladino name is ג׳ודיו, Djudio, ג׳ודיוס, Djudios, Yiddish, ייִד Yid, ייִדן, Yidn. The etymological equivalent is in use in languages, e. g. but derivations of the word Hebrew are also in use to describe a Jew, e. g. in Italian. The German word Jude is pronounced, the corresponding adjective jüdisch is the origin of the word Yiddish, in such contexts Jewish is the only acceptable possibility. Some people, however, have become so wary of this construction that they have extended the stigma to any use of Jew as a noun, a factual reconstruction for the origin of the Jews is a difficult and complex endeavor. It requires examining at least 3,000 years of ancient human history using documents in vast quantities, as archaeological discovery relies upon researchers and scholars from diverse disciplines, the goal is to interpret all of the factual data, focusing on the most consistent theory. In this case, it is complicated by long standing politics and religious, Jacob and his family migrated to Ancient Egypt after being invited to live with Jacobs son Joseph by the Pharaoh himself. The patriarchs descendants were later enslaved until the Exodus led by Moses, traditionally dated to the 13th century BCE, Modern archaeology has largely discarded the historicity of the Patriarchs and of the Exodus story, with it being reframed as constituting the Israelites inspiring national myth narrative. The growth of Yahweh-centric belief, along with a number of practices, gradually gave rise to a distinct Israelite ethnic group
5.
New York City
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The City of New York, often called New York City or simply New York, is the most populous city in the United States. With an estimated 2015 population of 8,550,405 distributed over an area of about 302.6 square miles. Located at the tip of the state of New York. Home to the headquarters of the United Nations, New York is an important center for international diplomacy and has described as the cultural and financial capital of the world. Situated on one of the worlds largest natural harbors, New York City consists of five boroughs, the five boroughs – Brooklyn, Queens, Manhattan, The Bronx, and Staten Island – were consolidated into a single city in 1898. In 2013, the MSA produced a gross metropolitan product of nearly US$1.39 trillion, in 2012, the CSA generated a GMP of over US$1.55 trillion. NYCs MSA and CSA GDP are higher than all but 11 and 12 countries, New York City traces its origin to its 1624 founding in Lower Manhattan as a trading post by colonists of the Dutch Republic and was named New Amsterdam in 1626. The city and its surroundings came under English control in 1664 and were renamed New York after King Charles II of England granted the lands to his brother, New York served as the capital of the United States from 1785 until 1790. It has been the countrys largest city since 1790, the Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to the Americas by ship in the late 19th and early 20th centuries and is a symbol of the United States and its democracy. In the 21st century, New York has emerged as a node of creativity and entrepreneurship, social tolerance. Several sources have ranked New York the most photographed city in the world, the names of many of the citys bridges, tapered skyscrapers, and parks are known around the world. Manhattans real estate market is among the most expensive in the world, Manhattans Chinatown incorporates the highest concentration of Chinese people in the Western Hemisphere, with multiple signature Chinatowns developing across the city. Providing continuous 24/7 service, the New York City Subway is one of the most extensive metro systems worldwide, with 472 stations in operation. Over 120 colleges and universities are located in New York City, including Columbia University, New York University, and Rockefeller University, during the Wisconsinan glaciation, the New York City region was situated at the edge of a large ice sheet over 1,000 feet in depth. The ice sheet scraped away large amounts of soil, leaving the bedrock that serves as the foundation for much of New York City today. Later on, movement of the ice sheet would contribute to the separation of what are now Long Island and Staten Island. The first documented visit by a European was in 1524 by Giovanni da Verrazzano, a Florentine explorer in the service of the French crown and he claimed the area for France and named it Nouvelle Angoulême. Heavy ice kept him from further exploration, and he returned to Spain in August and he proceeded to sail up what the Dutch would name the North River, named first by Hudson as the Mauritius after Maurice, Prince of Orange
6.
Great Depression
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The Great Depression was a severe worldwide economic depression that took place during the 1930s. The timing of the Great Depression varied across nations, in most countries it started in 1929 and it was the longest, deepest, and most widespread depression of the 20th century. In the 21st century, the Great Depression is commonly used as an example of how far the economy can decline. The depression originated in the United States, after a fall in stock prices that began around September 4,1929. Between 1929 and 1932, worldwide GDP fell by an estimated 15%, by comparison, worldwide GDP fell by less than 1% from 2008 to 2009 during the Great Recession. Some economies started to recover by the mid-1930s, however, in many countries, the negative effects of the Great Depression lasted until the beginning of World War II. The Great Depression had devastating effects in both rich and poor. Personal income, tax revenue, profits and prices dropped, while international trade plunged by more than 50%, unemployment in the U. S. rose to 25% and in some countries rose as high as 33%. Cities all around the world were hit hard, especially dependent on heavy industry. Construction was virtually halted in many countries, farming communities and rural areas suffered as crop prices fell by about 60%. Facing plummeting demand with few sources of jobs, areas dependent on primary sector industries such as mining and logging suffered the most. Even after the Wall Street Crash of 1929 optimism persisted for some time, john D. Rockefeller said These are days when many are discouraged. In the 93 years of my life, depressions have come, prosperity has always returned and will again. The stock market turned upward in early 1930, returning to early 1929 levels by April and this was still almost 30% below the peak of September 1929. Together, government and business spent more in the first half of 1930 than in the period of the previous year. On the other hand, consumers, many of whom had suffered losses in the stock market the previous year. In addition, beginning in the mid-1930s, a severe drought ravaged the agricultural heartland of the U. S, by mid-1930, interest rates had dropped to low levels, but expected deflation and the continuing reluctance of people to borrow meant that consumer spending and investment were depressed. By May 1930, automobile sales had declined to below the levels of 1928, prices in general began to decline, although wages held steady in 1930
7.
Dust Bowl
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The drought came in three waves,1934,1936, and 1939–1940, but some regions of the high plains experienced drought conditions for as many as eight years. During the drought of the 1930s, the unanchored soil turned to dust, which the prevailing winds blew away in huge clouds that sometimes blackened the sky. These choking billows of dust – named black blizzards or black rollers – traveled cross country, reaching as far as the East Coast and striking such cities as New York City and Washington, on the Plains, they often reduced visibility to 1 metre or less. While the term the Dust Bowl was originally a reference to the area affected by the dust, today it is usually used to refer to the event. The drought and erosion of the Dust Bowl affected 100,000,000 acres that centered on the panhandles of Texas and Oklahoma and touched adjacent sections of New Mexico, Colorado, the Dust Bowl forced tens of thousands of families to abandon their farms. The Dust Bowl area lies principally west of the 100th meridian on the High Plains, elevation ranges from 2,500 feet in the east to 6,000 feet at the base of the Rocky Mountains. The area is semiarid, receiving less than 20 inches of rain annually, the region is also prone to extended drought, alternating with unusual wetness of equivalent duration. During wet years, the soil provides bountiful agricultural output. The region is subject to high winds. During early European and American exploration of the Great Plains, this region was thought unsuitable for European-style agriculture, the lack of surface water and timber made the region less attractive than other areas for pioneer settlement and agriculture. The federal government encouraged settlement and development of the Plains for agriculture via the Homestead Act of 1862, an unusually wet period in the Great Plains mistakenly led settlers and the federal government to believe that rain follows the plow and that the climate of the region had changed permanently. Waves of European settlers arrived in the plains at the beginning of the 20th century, a return of unusually wet weather seemingly confirmed a previously held opinion that the formerly semiarid area could support large-scale agriculture. At the same time, technological improvements such as mechanized plowing, for example, in the Llano Estacado of eastern New Mexico and northwestern Texas, the area of farmland was doubled between 1900 and 1920, then tripled again between 1925 and 1930. The agricultural methods favored by farmers during this period created the conditions for large-scale erosion under certain environmental conditions, when severe drought struck the Great Plains region in the 1930s, it resulted in erosion and loss of topsoil because of farming practices at the time. The drought dried the topsoil and over time it became friable, without the indigenous grasses in place, the high winds that occur on the plains picked up the topsoil and created the massive dust storms that marked the Dust Bowl period. The persistent dry weather caused crops to fail, leaving the plowed fields exposed to wind erosion, the fine soil of the Great Plains was easily eroded and carried east by strong continental winds. On November 11,1933, a very strong dust storm stripped topsoil from desiccated South Dakota farmlands in just one of a series of severe dust storms that year. Beginning on May 9,1934, a strong, two-day dust storm removed massive amounts of Great Plains topsoil in one of the worst such storms of the Dust Bowl, the dust clouds blew all the way to Chicago, where they deposited 12 million pounds of dust
8.
Cimarron County, Oklahoma
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Cimarron County is the westernmost county in the U. S. state of Oklahoma. As of the 2010 census, the population was 2,475 and its county seat is Boise City. Located in the Oklahoma Panhandle, Cimarron County contains the community in the state that observes the Mountain Time Zone. Black Rock Mesa, the highest point in the state, is in the northwest corner of the county, throughout most of its history it has had both the smallest population and the lowest population density of any county in Oklahoma. Cimarron County was created at statehood in 1907, before the Oklahoma Organic Act was passed in 1890, the area had belonged to what was known as No Mans Land, also referred to as the Public Land Strip. This was a lawless area, with no organized government. In 1890, the became known as Beaver County, Oklahoma Territory. Informally, it was known as the Oklahoma Panhandle, there were only two communities in the strip. One, Carrizo, had 83 residents in 1890, while the other, otherwise, the land was used primarily by sheepherders from New Mexico. Seven communities vied to become county seat after statehood, Boise City, Cimarron, Doby, Hurley, a county election in 1908 selected Boise City. Railroads came late to this part of Oklahoma, the Elkhart and Santa Fe Railway built a line from Elkhart, Kansas through Cimarron County in 1925. It completed the link into New Mexico in 1932, the same company built a line from Colorado to Boise City in 1931 and extended it into Texas in 1937. This line still operates and in 2000 was part of the BNSF system. According to the U. S. Census Bureau, the county has an area of 1,841 square miles. It is the fourth-largest county in Oklahoma by area and it also has Oklahomas highest point at 4,973 feet on the Black Mesa. The northern part of the county is drained by the Cimarron River, the man-made Lake Carl Etling lies inside Black Mesa park. A location 300 yards east of Rt. 287/385 and 1.75 miles south of the Cimarron River is the place in the US less than 27 miles from five different states,26.99 miles from Kansas, New Mexico
9.
Oklahoma
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Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central United States. Oklahoma is the 20th-most extensive and the 28th-most populous of the 50 United States, the states name is derived from the Choctaw words okla and humma, meaning red people. The name was settled upon statehood, Oklahoma Territory and Indian Territory were merged, on November 16,1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state to enter the union. Its residents are known as Oklahomans, or informally Okies, and its capital, a major producer of natural gas, oil, and agricultural products, Oklahoma relies on an economic base of aviation, energy, telecommunications, and biotechnology. In 2007, it had one of the economies in the United States, ranking among the top states in per capita income growth. Oklahoma City and Tulsa serve as Oklahomas primary economic anchors, with nearly two-thirds of Oklahomans living within their metropolitan statistical areas. With small mountain ranges, prairie, mesas, and eastern forests, most of Oklahoma lies in the Great Plains, Cross Timbers, interior Highlands—a region especially prone to severe weather. The name Oklahoma comes from the Choctaw phrase okla humma, literally meaning red people, equivalent to the English word Indian, okla humma was a phrase in the Choctaw language used to describe Native American people as a whole. Oklahoma later became the de facto name for Oklahoma Territory, and it was approved in 1890. Oklahoma is the 20th-largest state in the United States, covering an area of 69,898 square miles and it is one of six states on the Frontier Strip and lies partly in the Great Plains near the geographical center of the 48 contiguous states. It is bounded on the east by Arkansas and Missouri, on the north by Kansas, on the northwest by Colorado, on the far west by New Mexico, much of its border with Texas lies along the Southern Oklahoma Aulacogen, a failed continental rift. The geologic figure defines the placement of the Red River, the Oklahoma panhandles Western edge is out of alignment with its Texas border. The Oklahoma/New Mexico border is actually 2.1 to 2.2 miles east of the Texas line, the border between Texas and New Mexico was set first as a result of a survey by Spain in 1819. It was then set along the 103rd Meridian, in the 1890s, when Oklahoma was formally surveyed using more accurate surveying equipment and techniques, it was discovered the Texas line was not set along the 103rd Meridian. Surveying techniques were not as accurate in 1819, and the actual 103rd Meridian was approximately 2.2 miles to the east and it was much easier to leave the mistake than for Texas to cede land to New Mexico to correct the surveying error. The placement of the Oklahoma/New Mexico border represents the true 103rd Meridian, cimarron County in Oklahomas panhandle is the only county in the United States that touches four other states, New Mexico, Texas, Colorado and Kansas. Its highest and lowest points follow this trend, with its highest peak, Black Mesa, at 4,973 feet above sea level, situated near its far northwest corner in the Oklahoma Panhandle. The states lowest point is on the Little River near its far southeastern boundary near the town of Idabel, Oklahoma, which dips to 289 feet above sea level
10.
Marjory Collins
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Marjory Collins was an American photojournalist. She is remembered above all for her coverage of the front during World War II. Marjory Collins was born March 15,1912 to Elizabeth Everts Paine and writer Frederick Lewis Collins in New York City and she studied at Sweet Briar College and the University of Munich. In 1935, Collins moved to Greenwich Village, and over the five years she studied photography informally with Ralph Steiner. Her work as a photographer was taken up by major agencies. As a result of a contribution for U. S. Camera and Travel about Hoboken, New Jersey and she completed some 50 assignments there with stories about the American way of life and support for the war effort. In line with new emphasis on multiculturalism, she contributed to photographic coverage of African Americans as well as citizens of Czech, German, Italian, in 1944 Collins worked freelance for a construction company in Alaska before travelling to Africa and Europe on government and commercial assignments. Thereafter she worked mainly as an editor and a writer covering civil rights, in the 1960s she edited American Journal of Public Health. Collins was very active politically, a feminist, she founded the journal Prime Time for the liberation of women in the prime of life, in the 1980s she moved to San Francisco where she obtained an M. A. in American Studies at Antioch College West. She died in 1985 at the age of 73, examples of Marjory Collins work from The Library of Congress Papers of Marjory Collins Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute, Harvard University
11.
Marion Post Wolcott
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Marion Post, later Marion Post Wolcott, was a noted American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression documenting poverty and deprivation. Marion Post was born in New Jersey on June 7,1910 and her parents split up and she was sent to boarding school, spending time at home with her mother in Greenwich Village when not at school. Here she met artists and musicians and became interested in dance. She studied at The New School, 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, at the New York Photo League she met Ralph Steiner and Paul Strand who encouraged her. Stryker was impressed by her work and hired her immediately, posts photographs for the FSA often explore the political aspects of poverty and deprivation. They also often find humour in the situations she encountered, in 1941 she met Leon Oliver Wolcott, deputy director of war relations for the U. S. Department of Agriculture under Franklin Roosevelt. They married, and she continued her assignments for the FSA and she found it difficult to fit in her photography around raising a family and a great deal of traveling and living overseas. In the 1970s, a renewed interest in Wolcotts images among scholars rekindled her own interest in photography, in 1978, Wolcott mounted her first solo exhibition in California, and by the 1980s the Smithsonian and the Metropolitan Museum of Art began to collect her photographs. The first monograph on her work was published in 1983 and she was an advocate for womens rights, in 1986, Wolcott said, Women have come a long way, but not far enough. Speak with your images from your heart and soul, looking for the Light, The Hidden Life and Art of Marion Post Wolcott. Marion Post Wolcott, A Photographic Journey, albuquerque, University of New Mexico Press,1989. The Photography of Marion Post Wolcott Website created by Wolcotts daughter, hosted on J. David Sapirs site Fixing Shadows, available online, http, carmel, CA, Friends of Photography,1983. Prose, Francine, The Photographs of Marion Post Wolcott, an extensive anthology of Marion Post Wolcotts photography edited by her daughter, Linda Wolcott-Moore. FSA Photos, including many by Wolcott, posted by Library of Congress on Flickr Commons Website, oral history interview with Marion Post Wolcott,1965 Jan
12.
Walker Evans
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Walker Evans was an American photographer and photojournalist best known for his work for the Farm Security Administration documenting the effects of the Great Depression. Much of Evanss work from the FSA period uses the large-format and he said that his goal as a photographer was to make pictures that are literate, authoritative, transcendent. Many of his works are in the permanent collections of museums and have been the subject of retrospectives at such institutions as The Metropolitan Museum of Art or George Eastman House. Born in St. Louis, Missouri, to Jessie and Walker, Walker Evans came from an affluent family and his father was an advertising director. He spent his youth in Toledo, Chicago, and New York City and he attended The Loomis Institute and Mercersburg Academy before graduating from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts, in 1922. He studied French literature for a year at Williams College, spending much of his time in the schools library, after spending a year in Paris in 1926, he returned to the United States to join the edgy literary and art crowd in New York City. John Cheever, Hart Crane, and Lincoln Kirstein were among his friends and he was a clerk for a stockbroker firm in Wall street from 1927 to 1929. Evans took up photography in 1928 around the time he was living in Ossining and his influences included Eugène Atget and August Sander. In 1930, he published three photographs in the poetry book The Bridge by Hart Crane, in 1931, he made a photo series of Victorian houses in the Boston vicinity sponsored by Lincoln Kirstein. In May and June 1933, Evans took photographs in Cuba on assignment for Lippincott, the publisher of Carleton Beals The Crime of Cuba, there Evans drank nightly with Ernest Hemingway, who loaned him money to extend his two-week stay an additional week. His photographs documented street life, the presence of police, beggars and dockworkers in rags and he also helped Hemingway acquire photos from newspaper archives that documented some of the political violence Hemingway described in To Have and Have Not. Fearing that his photographs might be deemed critical of the government and confiscated by Cuban authorities and he had no difficulties when returning to the United States, and 31 of his photos appeared in Beals book. The cache of prints left with Hemingway was discovered in Havana in 2002, in 1935, Evans spent two months at first on a fixed-term photographic campaign for the Resettlement Administration in West Virginia and Pennsylvania. From October on, he continued to do work for the RA and later the Farm Security Administration. Its detailed account of three farming families paints a moving portrait of rural poverty. Evanss photographs of the families made them icons of Depression-Era misery, in September 2005, Fortune revisited Hale County and the descendants of the three families for its 75th anniversary issue. Evans continued to work for the FSA until 1938 and that year, an exhibition, Walker Evans, American Photographs, was held at The Museum of Modern Art, New York. This was the first exhibition in the devoted to the work of a single photographer
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