Helen M. Post

Creator Details

  • Birth

    1907 (Bloomfield, New Jersey)

  • Death

    1979 (Washington, D.C.)

Post had a short and focused career as a photographer. She had grown up in an artistic family and, with her sister, Marion Post Wolcott, spent time in Austria studying with famed Viennese photographer Trude Fleischmann. In 1935, the rising danger of prewar Europe sent the women home, where they each pursued photography as a career. Post did some freelance work before finding her primary subject: southwestern Indigenous communities. She ultimately created thousands of images of Jicarilla Apache, Diné (Navajo), Hopi, and people from other Nations. Post’s work gained some notice among White Americans interested in Indigenous life—purchased by the Bureau of Indian Affairs and used to illustrate books like anthropologist Oliver La Farge’s As Long as the Grass Shall Grow (1940)—but she stopped photographing around 1941.

In 1985, the Helen Post Collection and the Helen Post Papers came to the Carter as a gift from the artist's son.

 

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