Marjory Collins, 1912-1985

The daughter of Elizabeth Everts Paine and Frederick Lewis Collins, Marjory Collins was born on March 15, 1912. She spent her childhood in Scarsdale, New York, and in Europe. She attended Brearley School, Sweet Briar College, the University of Munich, and Antioch College West. Shortly after starting at Sweet Briar College, Collins married Yale student John "Jack" I. H. Baur (1909-1987) in 1931. The couple continued their education at the University of Munich during a year in Europe, before divorcing in 1935.

In 1935, Collins moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and studied photography with Ralph Steiner until 1940. During World War II, she worked for the Office of War Information as part of Roy Styker's documentary photography team. When the job ended in 1944, she moved to Alaska for a year, where she worked for a construction company and as a freelance photojournalist. She also married and divorced again. In 1945, she began traveling extensively, working on photographic assignments for United States government agencies and for commercial photo presses such as Black Star, the Associated Press, and Time, Inc., in Egypt, Ethiopia, Ireland, Italy, Italian Somaliland, Kenya, Rwanda, and Uganda. Between 1948-1950, Collins married for a third time, but that marriage also failed with her husband destroying many of her photographs and negatives.

In the 1960s and 1970s, Collins became a political activist, involving herself in civil rights, peace activism, and feminism. She was the founder and first editor of the monthly publication, Peace Concern, and was associated with the Center for the Study of Democratic Institutions (1964-1968). During the late 1960s, Collins' interests became increasingly focused on older women's issues, and she was particularly concerned with ageism and its effects on women. In 1984, she received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Antioch College West, where she studied American studies and women's history. She also founded the magazine Prime Time, Inc. "for the liberation of women in the prime of life," and was an active member of Older Women’s Liberation (OWL). Though Collins spent a portion of her adult life in Vermont, she lived in San Francisco during the 1980s and died there from esophageal cancer at age seventy-three in 1985.

From the guide to the Papers of Marjory Collins, 1904-1985, (Schlesinger Library, Radcliffe Institute)