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The Beginning of a Career and a Friendship with Wright
The Beginning of a Career and a Friendship with Wright
Joe Munroe was born in 1917 and grew up in Detroit, Michigan. He began his work in photography as a darkroom technician at a General Motors plant in Detroit, Michigan. His professional photography career started in 1939 as a staff photographer and teacher at Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Michigan. Eliel Saarinen, the director of Cranbrook, recommended Munroe to take photos for Frank Lloyd Wright and his houses. Munroe’s first photos of Wright's houses were the Smith House and Affleck House, a few miles from Cranbrook. During World War II, Munroe left Cranbrook intending to enlist as a pilot in the United States Air Force, but ended up working as a Public Relations Photographer. He continued to work with Wright during this time and photographed the Carlton Wall House (also known as the Snowflake House) in Plymouth Township and the Goetsch–Winckler House in Okemos, Michigan.
Portrait of Joe Munroe;
Courtesy of Ohio History Connection
In correspondence with Frank Lloyd Wright, Munroe speaks of his photos of the house: “In them I tried to say something more than just a record of the house, because I feel the house is more than just a house…The feeling of the house, different rooms etc. – all of those are more important to me than merely recording the house as an object.”
Munroe's Move to Knox County
Munroe's Move to Knox County
In April of 1945, Joe Munroe asked Frank Lloyd Wright to design a house for him and his wife: “Virginia and I would like very much for the next to be a ‘Wright’ – the reasons, I hope, require no explanation.” Wright responds, “Dear Joe: Why not?” Munroe and Wright continued to correspond by mail for the next two years as they discussed the plans for design, location, and cost. Early in these discussions, Munroe asked Wright to add a photography studio and darkroom to the house, a rare Wright house feature in its designs. The location of the house also changed numerous times; while initial talks of the house's location were in Michigan, Munroe and his wife decided to look for land in Ohio, specifically Knox County.
Munroe originally found the area through his work for the Cincinnati-based The Farm Quarterly Magazine. While stationed in Texas for the Air Force in 1945, he photographed more Wright houses in the area. Eventually, he caught the attention of an editor at The Farm Quarterly, who contacted him to see if he would be interested in working as a staff photographer. Munroe took up the offer. His first assignment was in Gambier at the Woodbine Farms. His job was to photograph farm and rural life subjects, which led to his prolific and eminent career in the genre of agricultural photos. While working for The Farm Quarterly, he also worked for other magazines, such as Minicam Photography Magazine, as an editor and author. Munroe stated, “the years he spent in Ohio (approximately 1945-195[5]) were truly the formative years of his career, as it was here that the warmth and directness of his style as an artist developed.”
He and Virginia continued to live in Detroit from 1945-47, but they finally moved to Mount Vernon in 1947. During this time, the house was still at the forefront of Munroe’s mind, as he met with local builder James Beam and was given an estimate for the cost. It was too expensive for Munroe at the time, but with his work, he tried to save up what he could. In 1952, Munroe began freelancing after leaving The Farm Quarterly, with work shown in LIFE Magazine and National Geographic. He and an associate also started an “office-and-lab workshop” in Mount Vernon. Despite these new ventures, Munroe still struggled to earn enough money to start building the house, and after the birth of his fourth child, Virginia and Joe decided to move to Orinda, California, while still owning the plot of land in Gambier.
In a letter to Wright after the move, Munroe asks, “What now?” to which Wright responds, “Whenever you are ready – we are, as always.”
Life After Ohio
Life After Ohio
Munroe’s time in California was still fruitful for him, as he photographed famous individuals such as U.S. President Lyndon B. Johnson, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev, artist Georgia O'Keefe, and took his most well-known photograph for LIFE Magazine of 22 college students cramming into a glass telephone booth at St. Mary's College in Moraga, CA. He also became involved in cinematography, specifically about the environment. He created Dare The Wildest River (1965) and produced Showcase of the Ages (1965), both shown on PBS and featuring the Colorado River and the Grand Canyon. In 1991, he and author Kirby Multon published Changing Faces on Our Land, using Munroe’s photos to document changes in US farming after World War II. His last work was Let the Mountains Talk (1997), a film interviewing one of the founders of the Sierra Club, David R. Brower.
Virginia Munroe also became a noted artist in her own right, making paintings and prints after the couple moved to California. She died in Orinda, CA, in 2019 at the age of 102.
Joe Munroe passed away on March 11th, 2014, at 97 years old, but his work still lives on today in his photographs and archives. You can find a piece of his work in the Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) in New York. His pieces were a part of three separate shows from 1942 to 1950.
This page's photos are all Munroe's, which he donated to the Ohio History Connection in 1997. These photos are part of an archive of over 60,000 images and over 300 movie film reels. If you would like to see more of Munroe's work, please visit Ohio History Connection's Joe Munroe Collection
Credits
Credits
Special thanks to Greg Spaid for providing us with documents, letters, and an immensely valuable interview with Joe Munroe himself!
Cover Image: Cows Grazing in Pasture by Joe Munroe; Courtesy of Ohio History Connection
Ohio History Connection - Joe Munroe Collection
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