Fred Joseph Maroon (September 24, 1924 – November 5, 2001) was an American photographer who worked in a breadth of photographic categories over his career. A trained architect, he worked in fashion, travel, portraiture, food and architectural photography but is probably best known for his extensive coverage of the Nixon administration before, during and through the
Watergate scandal
The Watergate scandal was a major political scandal in the United States involving the administration of President Richard Nixon from 1972 to 1974 that led to Nixon's resignation. The scandal stemmed from the Nixon administration's continual ...
. He was the father of guitarist Paul Maroon from defunct
indie rock
Indie rock is a Music subgenre, subgenre of rock music that originated in the United States, United Kingdom and New Zealand from the 1970s to the 1980s. Originally used to describe independent record labels, the term became associated with the mu ...
New Brunswick, New Jersey
New Brunswick is a city (New Jersey), city in and the county seat, seat of government of Middlesex County, New Jersey, Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Lebanese descent, Maroon began his interest in photography with a
Kodak Brownie
The Brownie was a series of cameras made by Eastman Kodak. Released in 1900, it introduced the snapshot to the masses. It was a basic cardboard box camera with a simple convex-concave lens that took 2 1/4-inch square pictures on No. 117 roll film ...
camera. His mother famously threw it out a second-story window one day claiming he was wasting too much time with it and ignoring his paper route. He served as a signalman in
World War II
World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great powers—forming two opposin ...
and studied architecture at the
Catholic University of America
The Catholic University of America (CUA) is a private Roman Catholic research university in Washington, D.C. It is a pontifical university of the Catholic Church in the United States and the only institution of higher education founded by U.S. ...
in Washington, DC, where he was editor-in-chief of the school yearbook, ''The Cardinal.'' In 1950 he won a scholarship from
Columbia University
Columbia University (also known as Columbia, and officially as Columbia University in the City of New York) is a private research university in New York City. Established in 1754 as King's College on the grounds of Trinity Church in Manhatt ...
to study architecture at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, France, and during his time there, ''
Life magazine
''Life'' was an American magazine published weekly from 1883 to 1972, as an intermittent "special" until 1978, and as a monthly from 1978 until 2000. During its golden age from 1936 to 1972, ''Life'' was a wide-ranging weekly general-interest ma ...
'' offered to make him a "stringer" in their Paris bureau. From 1950 to 1951 he studied architecture and also traveled extensively through post-war Europe. He went to 19 different countries capturing the history, devastation and rebirth he found on the continent.
Career
Though he returned to New York City to practice architecture, his photographs of Europe caught the eye of
Edward Steichen
Edward Jean Steichen (March 27, 1879 – March 25, 1973) was a Luxembourgish American photographer, painter, and curator, renowned as one of the most prolific and influential figures in the history of photography.
Steichen was credited with tr ...
, then the curator of the
Museum of Modern Art
The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues.
It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of ...
, for an exhibition he was doing called ''Always the Young Strangers''. it was this exhibition that led to Maroon's permanent professional move from architecture to photography.
Through the second half of the 20th century, Maroon did a series of coffee-table books and photographed for many leading magazines. Among these were his most exotic work, a series of eight fashion stories he did in the late 1960s and early '70s in remote and challenging locations. In addition to two fashion stories in the
USSR
The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...
(
Leningrad
Saint Petersburg ( rus, links=no, Санкт-Петербург, a=Ru-Sankt Peterburg Leningrad Petrograd Piter.ogg, r=Sankt-Peterburg, p=ˈsankt pʲɪtʲɪrˈburk), formerly known as Petrograd (1914–1924) and later Leningrad (1924–1991), i ...
and Moscow, both in 1967) were
Mongolia
Mongolia; Mongolian script: , , ; lit. "Mongol Nation" or "State of Mongolia" () is a landlocked country in East Asia, bordered by Russia to the north and China to the south. It covers an area of , with a population of just 3.3 million, ...
(1966) and
Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordere ...
(1968.)
His most significant historical work was made during the Nixon administration. Maroon later wrote: "After Kennedy and Johnson nobody seemed to be running stories on the Nixon White House. The big news magazines just didn't like him, so I proposed a book." That book was '' Courage and Hesitation'', which was published just as stories about Watergate began to break. Maroon curtailed all other stories for a couple years, realizing that something of great significance was taking place and he needed to cover it. The resulting collection begins with Nixon's 1972 reelection campaign and runs through his resignation in 1974. Because of what Maroon described as the "negative and worrisome mood" of the country, he locked away 576 rolls of Watergate film and did not allow most of his pictures to be published until 1999, when he brought out ''The Nixon Years, 1969–1974, White House to Watergate'' (Abbeville Press).The Smithsonian did an exhibition of these photographs in that year as well.
Through the 1980s and 1990s Maroon authored a series of coffee-table books on a variety of subjects, ranging from the modern US Navy ''Keepers of the Sea'' (co-authored by
Edward L. Beach, Jr.
Edward Latimer Beach Jr. (April 20, 1918 – December 1, 2002) was a highly decorated United States Navy submarine officer and best-selling author.
During World War II, he participated in the Battle of Midway and 12 combat patrols, earning 10 de ...
) and the food of chef Jean-Louis Palladin. He also did three books on his hometown of Washington, DC. In his final two major projects, Maroon went back to his roots focusing on architectural photography. In 1993 he authored ''The United States Capitol'' and in 1996 ''The Supreme Court of the United States''. Both books were coauthored by his wife Suzy Maroon. Each book was done under the jurisdiction of the historical society of that building and each was a thorough architectural study featuring interiors, exteriors and historic details. Over the course of these projects and his many years in Washington, DC, Maroon developed what many consider the definitive photographic collection of the city.
After his death, the Maroon family decided that the entire photographic collection would be donated to the Briscoe Center for American History at the
University of Texas
The University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin, UT, or Texas) is a public research university in Austin, Texas. It was founded in 1883 and is the oldest institution in the University of Texas System. With 40,916 undergraduate students, 11,075 ...
.
Bibliography
*''The Nixon Years'' (1999); text by
Tom Wicker
Thomas Grey Wicker (June 18, 1926 – November 25, 2011) was an American journalist. He was a political reporter and columnist for ''The New York Times''.
Background and education
Wicker was born in Hamlet, North Carolina. He was a graduate ...
*''The Supreme Court of the United States'' (1996); text by Suzy Maroon
*''The United States Capitol'' (1993); text by Suzy Maroon; introduction by
Daniel J. Boorstin
Daniel Joseph Boorstin (October 1, 1914 – February 28, 2004) was an American historian at the University of Chicago who wrote on many topics in American and world history. He was appointed the twelfth Librarian of the United States Congress in ...
*''The Catholic University of America: Century Ended, Century Begun'' (1991)
*''Jean Louis: Cooking with the Seasons'' (1989); recipes by Jean-Louis Palladin
*''The English Country House: A Tapestry of Ages'' (1985); text by
Mark Girouard
Mark Girouard (7 October 1931 – 16 August 2022) was a British architectural historian. He was an authority on the country house, and Elizabethan and Victorian architecture.
Life and career
Girouard was born on 7 October 1931. He was educ ...
*''Maroon on Georgetown'' (1983)
*''Keepers of the Sea'' (1983); text by
Edward L. Beach, Jr.
Edward Latimer Beach Jr. (April 20, 1918 – December 1, 2002) was a highly decorated United States Navy submarine officer and best-selling author.
During World War II, he participated in the Battle of Midway and 12 combat patrols, earning 10 de ...
*''The Egypt Story'' (1981); text by P.H. Newby
*''These United States'' (1977); text by Hugh Sidey
*'' Courage and Hesitation'' (1971); text by Allen Drury
*''Washington Magnificent Capitol'' (1966); text by A. Robert Smith and Eric Sevareid)
Smithsonian Institution
The Smithsonian Institution ( ), or simply the Smithsonian, is a group of museums and education and research centers, the largest such complex in the world, created by the U.S. government "for the increase and diffusion of knowledge". Founded ...