Marie Cosindas (1923 – 2017)
American Pioneer of Colour Polaroid
A pioneer of colour polaroid photography in the 1960s, American photographer Marie Cosindas (1923-2017) was the 5th woman to be honoured with a solo exhibition by the Edward Stelchen Photography Center, Museum of Modern Art, NY in 1966 and helped launch colour photography as an artform.
Marie Cosindas started her career experimenting with the newly launched colour polaroid format in the 1960s and was a pioneer of colour photography.
She was born into a Greek-American family in Boston, Massachusetts and trained as a textile designer. Her first photographs were merely reference for her design work. When Marie became interested in photography, and began classes in 1961, with famed black and white landscape photographer Ansel Adams, it was already evident to him that she ‘thought in colour’. When Polaroid Land was looking for photographers to test their new film in 1962, he recommended her to them. Her resulting painterly still lifes and portraits thrilled the company. Her career was launched when some of these first 4 x 5 prints were shown at MoMA in 1966. Marie became only the 5th woman to be so honoured in the museum’s history and the exhibition travelled to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Art Institute of Chicago, making her one of the best known photographers in the US.
Her intense, saturated colour ‘arrangements’ of dolls, flowers and masks, influenced by 17th century Dutch still lifes, such as in Asparagus #1 and 2 (1967) became her signature style. But her portraits were also extraordinary. Ellen, 1965, captured the zeitgeist of romanticism of the 60s, the BIBA era which so influenced the likes of Sarah Moon; Paula Nude, 1966 harkened back to the Pictorialists and Julia Margaret Cameron with her marbled skin tones and salmon pink of the roses emerging from the shadows like hand colouring.
Marie soon also became a celebrated portrait photographer, one of the few women to photograph designers Coco Chanel, Yves Saint Laurent (1968), Gres (1969) and artist Andy Warhol (1966). Life magazine’s May 3, 1968, feature said of her:
“Marie Cosindas combines modern film with old technique to create an art beyond realism.”
But sadly her style was eclipsed in the 70s and 80s by Pop Art and Minimalism. Polaroids ironically became used by artists like Andy Warhol in the 70s for their spontaneity and immediacy, whilst her crafted experiments with exposure, temperature and filters and Symbolist imagery, fell out of fashion.
She published ‘Mary Cosindas: Color Photography’ in 1978 and her work can be found in the collections of LACMA, The Getty Museum and MoMA. Her last major show before her death in 2017 was at the Amon Carter Museum of American Art, Fort Worth in 2013.
By Paula Vellet
Related Content
A Feminist History of the Polaroid Picture
Degrees of Separation
Which other famous woman photographer also trained as a textile designer? Answer here.
The Heroines Collection
We hold a copy of the 1966 touring catalogue of Marie’s polaroids in the Collection. Available for browsing.
