6 minute read
Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America, 1940-1978
A M E R I C A N E X P O S U R E
For centuries, the contributions of women artists and artists of color have been overlooked in the annals of an art history that has long centered men of European heritage, and the story of Marion Palfi is no different. This July, however, an exhibition co-organized by Phoenix Art Museum and the Center for Creative Photography (CCP) at the University of Arizona resurrects Palfi’s legacy, representing the first major display of the photographer’s work since her death more than 40 years ago.
THROUGH JANUARY 2, 2022 NORTON GALLERY
Drawn exclusively from CCP’s vast Marion Palfi Archive and on view July 21, 2021 through January 2, 2022, Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi ’s America, 1940-1978 introduces Arizona audiences to an extensive visual record depicting 20th-century American injustice and created by a photographer who, according to Nancy Coleman of The New York Times, is just now getting her due. The exhibition features more than 80 prints and extensive archival materials, many of which have never before been exhibited or published, shedding unprecedented light on how Palfi combined deep, sustained research with photographic documentation to achieve humanitarian ends. “Freedom Must Be Lived shows us how photography can be used as a political and social tool to change oppressive systems,” said exhibition curator Audrey Sands, PhD, who serves as the Norton Family Assistant Curator of Photography, a joint curatorial position shared between Phoenix Art Museum and CCP. “Palfi used the medium to advocate for her belief that basic human equality and freedom must not only be written into law but upheld and protected in all areas of daily life.” A German immigrant who fled during World War II, Palfi arrived in New York in 1940 to a reality far from the myth of the American Dream. Outraged at the economic, racial, and
CONTINUED ON PAGE 26
A [MARION] PALFI PHOTOGRAPH BRINGS US FACE TO FACE WITH HIDDEN REALITIES THAT ITS SURFACE ONLY CAUSES US TO BEGIN TO EXPLORE.
— LANGSTON HUGHES, AMERICAN POET + WRITER —
social inequities she encountered, she spent nearly four decades traveling throughout the United States, observing and documenting the systemic disenfranchisement of Black Americans, Indigenous peoples, older adults, and other marginalized communities to portray the effects of discrimination and expose the links between racism and poverty. Drawing upon her own experiences as a woman and an immigrant who was subject to sexism and prejudice and had witnessed the catastrophically devastating racism and nationalism of WWII Europe, Palfi used her camera to increase awareness of inequality and injustice in the hopes of improving conditions for others. As a white photojournalist, she undoubtedly operated from a position of privilege that allowed her, as an outsider, to gain access to communities and individuals subject to systems of oppression. Understanding this complex power dynamic, she deeply considered the responsibility that came with her role and strove to approach her work with “sensitive human relations.” She taught this same approach to her students during her time as an instructor on the social uses of photography. As a self-described “social-research photographer,” Palfi took on projects spanning years, providing her with the time to thoroughly investigate and immerse herself in the communities for whom she sought to advocate. Rather than pursue success in galleries or museums, Palfi created photographs meant to live in the world and achieve the greatest political and social impact. Over her career, she worked with numerous mainstream magazines and progressive American periodicals like Ebony, Survey Graphic, The New York Times, and Common Ground; published books; exhibited her work in libraries; and took on government-sponsored projects. Sponsors for her work included the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP), the Children’s Bureau of the Federal Security Administration, and the New York State Committee on Discrimination in Housing. Among her first projects upon arriving in the U.S. was a photographic study sponsored by the Council Against Intolerance in America that documented artists of color, including Black American poet Langston Hughes, who became a longtime friend and admirer of her work; Jamaican-American master conductor Dean Dixon; and Japanese-American ballet dancer Sono Osato. On view this summer in the Museum’s Norton Gallery, Freedom Must Be Lived offers audiences the chance to discover Palfi’s expansive body of work and its sustained focus on themes of inequity, marginalization, racial injustice, and other social concerns, all of which continue to afflict the United States in some capacity. Organized into four sections, the exhibition highlights the four major projects of the photographer’s career. Children in America examines Palfi’s 1945–52 eponymous study of children living in extreme poverty. Over three years, she photographed American youth in reformatories, jails, migrant camps, tenant farms, and urban neighborhoods. Palfi supplemented this visual record with demographic and sociological data on, for example, the lack of adequate housing, nutritious food, and medical and dental care for children. The series was eventually circulated in schools and libraries as a didactic exhibition and distributed to government agencies.
The section At First I Liked the Whites, which derives its name from an Indigenous song lamenting the exploitive and harmful effects of colonialism, introduces visitors to a project that remained unpublished at the time of her death. In 1967, Palfi received a Guggenheim Foundation grant to document the impact of the Indian Relocation Act of 1956, which decreased government funding for Indigenous peoples living on reservations in an effort to encourage them to leave their traditional lands and assimilate into metropolitan areas. Palfi lived for two years on the Hopi reservation in Northern Arizona and, over the seven-year project, became acutely aware of her role as a white photographer and outsider, observing that “[a] camera is thought of as an intruder to be distrusted, because many before me have misused it.” A third section showcases work from a study of aging in New York City, funded by the New York Mayor’s Advisory Committee for the Aged. The project documented institutions for older adults throughout the city, including men’s shelters, assisted-living communities, and physical and psychiatric rehabilitation centers, uncovering discrimination against older workers and the stigma of disability. Titled You Have Never Been Old: A Social Study in Geriatrics and featuring
CONTINUED ON PAGE 34
image credits: (page 24) Marion Palfi, Greenwood, Mississippi, 1963. (page 25) Marion Palfi, Chicago School Boycott, 1963-1964. (page 26, left to right) Marion Palfi, Somewhere in the South, 1946-1949; Marion Palfi, Case History, 1955-1957. (page 27, top to bottom) Marion Palfi, In the Shadow of the Capitol, Washington, D.C., 1946-1948; Marion Palfi, Navajo, Relocation; Leaving Home, 1967-1969. All artworks gelatin silver prints. Center for Creative Photography, University of Arizona: Marion Palfi Archive/Gift of the Menninger Foundation and Martin Magner. © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents.
