Maxine Angle, who attended St. Mary’s Female Seminary-Junior College between 1943 and 1945, was an aspiring photographer in her own right. During her time at St. Mary’s, Maxine (then Maxine Slyder) took several photos which have now contributed to the SMCM archives, allowing a glimpse into life at St. Mary’s during World War II.
Maxine took over a hundred photos of students during her two years at the junior college, using a 4×5 speed “Brownie” graphic camera. She shot individual “glamour” shots of her fellow seminarians posed in evening gowns and bathing suits (including Doris Ann Miller, featured below). According to Maxine, “the girls liked having their pictures taken in their evening gowns. The stairway and the fireplace in the sitting room were favorite settings.” Because the 1940s was a time of formality, few women would be seen photographed in more casual attire.
However, that is not to say Maxine didn’t succeed in snapping a few more intimate photographs. She recalls having taken photos of girls in “cheesecake” poses, wearing towels and even in the bathtub!
These photographs would have caused a scandal had anyone else seen them, but as Maxine explains in a 1994 letter to Janet Butler Haugaard, “Since I developed and printed the film in my dorm room during study hall, there was no danger of them being seen elsewhere.” Maxine converted her own closet into a darkroom, pinning negatives to the wall, despite the disapproval of school administrators.
Maxine also frequently photographed school events and architecture. One photo of the state house was achieved with her Brownie, taken from the oval window on the stairway of the Main Building. A far more interesting picture (below) depicts an LCI (Landing Craft Infantry) moored next to the school, behind a group of students and a dancing girl, on May Day in 1944. The LCI would likely have come from the Patuxent River Naval Base that was established in 1943, during the war. Due to national security reasons, the women were not allowed to photograph the boat.
As Maxine explains, “When they saw my camera, a voice came over the loudspeaker [and said] ‘No pictures.’ So I turned away from that view, but later, when photographing the dancer, I accidentally shot the ship in the background. Evidently, the sailors were so busy watching the girls, they didn’t notice me.”
Another photograph, titled “Feasting on a Package from Home” (below), shows a group of St. Mary’s girls gathered with a package of food. The occasion would have been particularly exciting because of the food rations imposed on U.S. citizens at the time. Through the composition of the photograph, Maxine was able to elegantly capture this excitement.
Maxine’s eye for composition and photography must have impressed many people because, after graduating St. Mary’s, she went on to attend the Maryland Institute of Art in Baltimore.
All photographs featured below can be accessed through the SMCM digital archives, in the “Historic Campus Photographs” Collection: https://dev.smcm.edu/library/archives/digital-collections/.
