Toni Frissell

Antoinette (Toni) Frissell born in New York City to Lewis Fox Frissell, medical director of St. Luke’s Hospital, and Antoinette Wood Frissell. Little Toni has two older brothers, Varick and Montgomery. She will be raised in Manhattan, attend Chapin School, and summer in Newport. Her grandparents were railroad people who settled in Oregon.

Montgomery Frissell dies in a mountain-climbing accident at the age of seventeen.

After graduating from the Farmington School in Connecticut—aka, Miss Porter’s—spends evenings in nightclubs and speakeasies (Jack and Charlie’s 21 Club, Texas Guinan’s, Jimmy Durante’s Dover Club, and a gangster-run place called the Hotsy Totsy). She will spend much of the decade traveling around Europe, having fun and falling in love.

Inspired by her older cousin, Rosamond Pinchot (star of The Miracle), appears as a tree in a Max Reinhardt stage production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and then in Danton’s Death.Her height would prevent her from an acting career, and so she starts taking photographs, inspired by her older brother, Varick, an explorer and documentary freelancer.

Takes a job selling dresses at Stern’s department store. After her suggested ad copy for a silver-fox collar, “Men Don’t Like Cold Women,” appears in the Sunday papers, Toni’s mother shows it to Vogue’s editor in chief, Edna Woolman Chase, who hires her on the spot as a caption writer. In March, brother Varick disappears at sea when his expedition’s ship sinks. Frissell’s engagement to Count Serge Orloff-Davidoff is broken off by his mother, who insists they are not suited for one another. Carmen Snow, fashion editor, fires Frissell for her poor spelling and suggests she take up photography. That summer in Newport, Frissell photographs friends and socialites. Her first image is published in Town & Country. Vogue gives her a contract and she apprentices briefly with Cecil Beaton and sits at the knee of Edward Steichen. In a staff memorandum, Carmel Snow compliments Frissell’s use of nonprofessional models.

Set up on a blind date with Francis McNeil Bacon III, a Harvard graduate and stockbroker. The two marry in September.

Son Varick Bacon born.

Asks Vogue’s art director, Mehemed Fehmy Agha, for a raise from $2,400 to $3,600 a year. He strongly objects but is overruled by publisher Condé Nast, who is a fan of her outdoor fashion shoots.

Purchases Sherrewogue, a large house in Head of Harbor, on the North Fork of Long Island, New York, that dates from 1689 and was renovated by Stanford White. Daughter Sidney Bacon born; she will eventually become a photographer in her own right.

With Edward Steichen retired, Cecil Beaton fired, and George Hoyningen-Huene out of the picture, Frisell’s work gains prominence. She does three Vogue covers (including one of a woman surfing in Hawaii).

Over her husband’s objections, spends ten weeks in England and Scotland as a volunteer photographer for the Red Cross. Several of the resulting 2,000 frames are used in promotional posters. Takes an assignment as a freelance war correspondent and photographer, covering the Eighth Air Force and traveling through Italy and France. “The worst part of war,” she later says, “is what happens to the survivors—the widows without home or family; the ragged kids left to wander as orphans.”

Robert Louis Stevenson’s A Child’s Garden of Verses, featuring her photographs of her two children, published.

Photographs African-American pilots of the 332nd Fighter Group in Ramitelli, Italy. The images appear in Life magazine (and will prove significant in a positive public attitude shift in regard to blacks serving in the military). Around this time, leavesVogue for Harper’s Bazaar.

The Happy Island, a book written with her friend Sally Lee Woodall and featuring photographs of her children taken on a trip to Bermuda, published.

Toni Frissell’s Mother Goose is her next literary effort.

Photographs the reception following Jacqueline Bouvier’s marriage to Senator John F. Kennedy in Newport, R.I. on assignment for Harper’s Bazaar. Carmel Snow, now editor in chief of Bazaar, tells Frissell she has no use for the negatives and will not pay for her work or expenses; Frissell leaves the publication. Vogue persuades her to come back, promising she will no longer have to do fashion shots, which have become a bore. Among the first photographs Vogue prints by the prodigal daughter are those showing the coronation of Queen Elizabeth.

Becomes the first female photographer for Sports Illustrated,where she focuses on the pastimes of the affluent: yachting, fox-hunting, polo, steeplechase, golf, skiing.

The exhibit “A Number of Things,” at the I.B.M. Gallery in New York, features 170 of Frissell’s photographs, from candids and shots of her children to war photography and her official portrait of Winston Churchill.

After experiencing the beginning phases of Alzheimer’s disease, closes her Manhattan office and donates her life’s work of 300,000 images to the Library of Congress. She will continue to contribute images to Vogue until 1972.

The King Ranch, 1939–1944: A Photographic Essay is published.

Frissell’s husband dies.

Toni Frissell dies in the St. James Nursing Home. She is survived by daughter Sidney Bacon Stafford of Bellport, Long Island, and son Varick Bacon of Manhattan, as well as three grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.

Shortly before her death, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, a longtime admirer, edits Toni Frissell: Photographs 1933–1967for Doubleday.