Martha Holmes
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Martha Holmes Waxman (born February 7, 1923, Louisville, Kentucky; died, September 19, 2006, Manhattan, New York City, New York) was an American photographer and photojournalist, who worked for many years for Life magazine.
A Louisville native, Holmes was studying art at the University of Louisville and photography at the Speed Art Museum in Louisville when someone suggested working at the The Courier-Journal (Louisville) and The Louisville Times newspapers. She was hired and began as assistant to a color photographer on the paper's staff, but soon became a full-time black-and-white photographer when many of the paper's male photographers were called to service in World War II. For much of her time at the papers, she was the only female photographer on the paper's staff.
In September 1944, Holmes left Louisville for Life magazine, then "the country's most famous picture magazine, in the New York offices as a photographer," according to a Courier-Journal story at the time.
By 1947, Holmes had spent two years in California working for Life.
She moved to Washington, D.C., in 1947, to be one of Life's three staff photographers there. She covered the House Un-American Activities Committee hearings during the height of the committee's investigations into the entertainment industry and alleged communist propaganda.
After two years in Washington, she returned to New York and lived there for the rest of her life. She continued working for Life, for which she photographed two covers, on a freelance basis and by 1950 was named one of the top 10 female photographers in the nation.
Holmes's photographs were published in People, Redbook, Coronet and Collier's magazines and exhibited worldwide, including at the International Center of Photography, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Louvre in Paris.
Her most famous photographs were of the painter Jackson Pollock and film stars Humphrey Bogart and Lauren Bacall. She had an uncanny ability to put her subjects at ease around her camera and, as a result, was able to photograph them in poses that conveyed insight into their character.
Holmes said about her time at Life, "One thing Life always taught us: They'd say, 'Film is cheap. Use it. Shoot, shoot, shoot.'"
She was married for 46 years to Arthur Waxman, a theatrical executive and early general manager of the Actors Studio, who died in 1998.
Holmes died of natural causes in her Manhattan apartment at the age of 83.
