Marion Carpenter

At 82 years old, Marion Carpenter physical status not available right now. We will update Marion Carpenter's height, weight, eye color, hair color, build, and measurements.

Carpenter was born in St. Paul, Minnesota, the daughter of Lillian B. Marion of Minnesota and Harry Carpenter of Avery County, North Carolina. Her father Harry Carpenter moved from North Carolina to work as a laborer in Minnesota, where he met Lillian. They married and settled in St. Paul. As a girl, Marion Carpenter went to local schools and at first planned to be a nurse.

Her paternal Carpenter family were descended from Matthias Carpenter (a German immigrant originally named Zimmermann) of North Carolina. He was born ca. 1750-1755 and died in 1835 in Ashe County, North Carolina (now part of Watauga County, North Carolina). Carpenter worked as a nurse from 1942 to 1944. In her off-duty hours from study and work, she had joined the St. Paul Camera Club, where she learned the basics of photography. She became interested in news photography.

Photography career

In 1944, Carpenter moved to Washington D.C., where she started working for the Washington Times-Herald. She next joined the International News Photo (INP) syndicate as a special assignment photographer. In addition to her INP work, she did freelance portraits of senators and representatives. Described as "an athletic brunette", she was herself sometimes the subject of photos.

Her work with the INP syndicate was a factor in winning a highly coveted White House job in 1945, through which she soon developed a professional and cordial relationship with U.S. President Harry S. Truman. She made her mark in Washington "as a photographer of talent and temperament." She became the first woman member of the White House News Photographers Association. She was the only woman press photographer to travel with President Truman on a daily basis.

Carpenter was informally called "the Camera Girl" and "the Photographer Girl" in Washington circles. She resisted being "condescended to by the old men's club" and kept her spirit. In 1946, she told a reporter, "You have to be able to take the guff," after she won an award for a photo of Truman's playing the piano for Lauren Bacall. At the time, despite Carpenter's membership in the White House Photographers Association, women were not allowed at the annual dinners with the president. This policy did not change until 1962.

Carpenter also had pictures published in Life, the photo-journalism magazine which was very popular from the 1940s into the 1960s. For instance, in the May 23, 1949 issue of Life, Carpenter had nine of the twelve pictures in the article on E. George Luckey, who had been a member of the 39th District in the California State Legislature

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