Maria LaYacona (1926–2019) was an American-born photographer who worked primarily in Jamaica. For its first three decades, she was the official photographer for the country's

National Dance Theatre Company The National Dance Theatre Company of Jamaica (NDTC) is Jamaica's leading dance theatre company. History The company was founded in 1962 by Rex Nettleford and Eddy Thomas with fifteen dancers, with Nettleford acting as its artistic director and pr ...

Early life

LaYacona's parents emigrated from Italy to America and she was born in

Cleveland, Ohio Cleveland ( ), officially the City of Cleveland, is a city in the U.S. state of Ohio and the county seat of Cuyahoga County. Located in the northeastern part of the state, it is situated along the southern shore of Lake Erie, across the U.S. ...

, on 18 November 1926. Her father ran a portrait studio from the family home and she and her brother both assisted him in his

darkroom A darkroom is used to process photographic film, to make prints and to carry out other associated tasks. It is a room that can be made completely dark to allow the processing of the light-sensitive photographic materials, including film and ph ...

. She studied at the Winona School of Professional Photography in

Winona Lake, Indiana Winona Lake is a town in Wayne Township, Kosciusko County, in the U.S. state of Indiana, and the major suburb of Warsaw. The population was 4,908 at the 2010 census. Geography Winona Lake is located at (41.220818, -85.817118). It is now contiguo ...

, before moving to New York City in 1950 where she supported herself by taking photographs for publicity shots and society weddings. She worked as a photojournalist for ''

Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, to ...

'' and ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energ ...

'' and, in 1955 accepted an assignment from ''

Sports Illustrated ''Sports Illustrated'' (''SI'') is an American sports magazine first published in August 1954. Founded by Stuart Scheftel, it was the first magazine with circulation over one million to win the National Magazine Award for General Excellence twic ...

'', traveling to Jamaica to shoot the test series between

Australia Australia, officially the Commonwealth of Australia, is a Sovereign state, sovereign country comprising the mainland of the Australia (continent), Australian continent, the island of Tasmania, and numerous List of islands of Australia, sma ...

and the

West Indies The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...

Sabina Park Sabina Park is a cricket ground and the home of the Kingston Cricket Club, and is the only Test cricket ground in Kingston, Jamaica. History Sabina Park was originally a Pen (urban residence and adjoining land of a wealthy merchant, shopkeep ...

. She was entranced by the country and returned the same year and spent the rest of her life in Jamaica.

Career in Jamaica

To support herself, she accepted jobs for advertisements and tourism promotion and introduced school photography packages to the country, but her passion was portraiture. Her portrait of Prime Minister

Michael Manley Michael Norman Manley (10 December 1924 – 6 March 1997) was a Jamaican politician who served as the fourth Prime Minister of Jamaica from 1972 to 1980 and from 1989 to 1992. Manley championed a democratic socialist program, and has been d ...

appears on the $1,000 banknote. She photographed artists and politicians, as well as everyday Jamaicans—fisherman at work, and children playing. In 1964, two years after its founding, she joined the National Dance Theatre Company as official photographer, a position she retained until her retirement in 1992. Her photographs of the dancers were published in two books, ''Roots and Rhythms'' (1969) and ''Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity'' (1985). Several of her dance photographs were also featured on Jamaican postage stamps. She was founder of the Colour Photography Club, which was to become the Jamaica Photography Society. By 2000 LaYacona had retired to a townhouse in Kingston. She died on 28 April 2019.

Publications

*''Roots and Rhythms'' (1969) *''Dance Jamaica: Renewal and Continuity'' (1985) *''Jamaica Portraits'' (1998) *''Jamaica Reverie'' (2006)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Layacona, Maria 1926 births 2019 deaths Photographers from Ohio Jamaican photographers Jamaican women photographers 20th-century American women photographers 20th-century American photographers 21st-century American women photographers 21st-century American photographers Dance photographers Portrait photographers