Phyllis Dearborn Massar
American, 1916-2011
Born 1916, Seattle, Washington
Died 2011, New York
Massar graduated from the University of Washington with a liberal-arts degree in 1937. In 1938–39 she studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography and later at the Museum of Modern Art with Ansel Adams. She briefly ran a portrait studio in Seattle before turning to the photography of architecture. Her architectural photographs were first featured in Sunset magazine. From 1943 to 1963 she and her husband, Robert Massar, documented contemporary architecture in the Pacific Northwest working together professionally as Dearborn-Massar. Their extensive body of work was given to the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. A lifelong friend of Imogen Cunningham, Dearborn Massar was a member of Group f/64 and occasionally attended meetings and exhibitions at the Photo League. In the 1940s she became a volunteer in the Prints and Photographs department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she later curated several exhibitions, including "Edward Weston: 35 Photographs" (1972), "Photographs by Imogen Cunningham" (1973), and "Landscape/Cityscape: A Selection of Twentieth-Century American Photographs" (1974). In addition to photographing architecture for publication, she wrote numerous scholarly articles on Renaissance architectural prints and drawings.
Died 2011, New York
Massar graduated from the University of Washington with a liberal-arts degree in 1937. In 1938–39 she studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography and later at the Museum of Modern Art with Ansel Adams. She briefly ran a portrait studio in Seattle before turning to the photography of architecture. Her architectural photographs were first featured in Sunset magazine. From 1943 to 1963 she and her husband, Robert Massar, documented contemporary architecture in the Pacific Northwest working together professionally as Dearborn-Massar. Their extensive body of work was given to the University of Washington Libraries Special Collections. A lifelong friend of Imogen Cunningham, Dearborn Massar was a member of Group f/64 and occasionally attended meetings and exhibitions at the Photo League. In the 1940s she became a volunteer in the Prints and Photographs department of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, where she later curated several exhibitions, including "Edward Weston: 35 Photographs" (1972), "Photographs by Imogen Cunningham" (1973), and "Landscape/Cityscape: A Selection of Twentieth-Century American Photographs" (1974). In addition to photographing architecture for publication, she wrote numerous scholarly articles on Renaissance architectural prints and drawings.
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