Marion Palfi

• Name — Marion Palfi • Birthplace — Berlin, Germany • Died — November 4, 1978 • Place of death — Los Angeles, CA • Field — Photography • Awards — Rosenwald fellowship; Guggenheim Fellowship, 1967; National Endowment for the Arts fellowship, 1974 • Spouse — Erich Abraham, Benjamin Weiss, Martin Magner

Palfi was the daughter of German theater designer, Victor Palfi (1877–1921), and a Polish mother. She studied dance at private schools in Germany, and as a young woman she worked as a model, dancer, and actress, appearing in at least one film in 1926. In rejection of Germany's radical politics, she began to use photography and art to effect social change.

In 1932, Palfi became an apprentice at a commercial portrait studio in Berlin and also began working as a freelance magazine photographer. Two years later, she opened her own portrait studio there. Fleeing the Nazis in Berlin, she opened her own successful portrait studio in Amsterdam in 1936. She then fled Europe for the United States in 1940 after marrying an American soldier, Benjamin Weiss. In the U.S., Palfi supported herself by working in a photo-finishing lab in New York City and began working on a large project of photographic essays celebrating American minority artists. Great American Artists of Minority Groups (1945) opened doors for her: after meeting Langston Hughes and Arna Bontemps, Palfi was asked to photograph for a number of African American Causes. One of her photographs was published on the cover of the first issue of Ebony magazine, featuring the Henry Street Settlement of New York's Lower East Side. Palfi was granted an award from the Rosenwald Fellowship in 1946. Between the years of 1946-1949, Palfi used photography to catalog racial discrimination in the United States. Palfi's photographic study on the State of Georgia was hosted as an exhibit around the United States in 1950, including Nashville, Detroit, Chicago, and Washington D.C. Her work was used to garner legislative change when "The American Parents Committee" showed her photographs to members of Congress. From the mid-1960s to the 1970s, Palfi taught photography in Los Angeles. Institutions where she worked included the California Institute of the Arts, the Woman's Building, UCLA Extension, and the Inner City Cultural Center. Palfi was awarded a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1967 and a National Endowment for the Arts fellowship in 1974.

Palfi was the first photographer to arrive in Greenwood, Mississippi at the beginning of the town's civil rights protests in 1963. She photographed the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee offices after they were burned down, went to the residence of Dewy Green, and met with activists. As protests increased in violence, she was told to leave Greenwood. Following her time there, her photography was used by the US Department of Justice to support lawsuits against segregation in Greenwood and Leflore County. Palfi attended March on Washington (August 28, 1963). She additionally chronicled, in photography, the opening of Prince Edward County schools in 1964, and the end of Massive Resistance. Palfi marched at Selma in 1965 with Martin Luther King Jr. Marion describes herself as a "social change photographer" and she believed that art could and should effect social change. She used her camera as a tool to show the public the problems within their own society to an attempt to incite a movement of change.