Marie Cosindas (1923–2017)

Marie Alexia Cosindas was born in Boston, Massachusetts on September 22, 1923. After graduating from high school, she studied dressmaking at the Modern School of Fashion Design in Boston and took courses in painting, drawing, and graphic design at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts. Before show more becoming a photographer, she designed textiles, worked as a color coordinator for a firm that made museum reproductions in stone, and designed children's slippers with animal faces on them. After a family trip to Greece in 1959, she gave up painting and began studying photography with Paul Caponigro. In 1961, Edward Steichen, director of the photography department for the Museum of Modern Art, bought three photos, one for himself and two for the museum. She attended Ansel Adams's workshop in the Yosemite Valley. He recommended her to Polaroid, which approached her in 1962 to test a new product called Polacolor. Within three years and after much experimentation, Cosindas was working exclusively in color. She primarily photographed still lifes and portraits. Marie Cosindas: Polaroid Color Photographs, consisting of 40 images, traveled from the Museum of Modern Art to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston and the Art Institute of Chicago. Her work was later published in a book entitled Marie Cosindas: Color Photographs. She died on May 25, 2017 at the age of 93. (Bowker Author Biography) show less