Maria Bordy

Marla Bordy (née Tamarkina), also known as Maria Bock-Bordy and Maria Bordes was born on 15 August 1916 in Toropets (Торопец), Pskov Governorate, Russia, 400 km west of Moscow, with two sisters Frieda and Tamara, and a brother, Hans.^[1] She graduated in linguistics from the Moscow College of Foreign Languages in Moscow.^[2][3]

Bordy moved to Vienna to further her study in languages. Gifted a 35mm camera she started to document the period leading up to the Anschluss lived and was hired as a news photographer in about 1934. She covered the German invasion of Paris before departing wartime Europe.

She then entered the USA from Havana, Cuba on the SS Mexico on 1 July 1941, and on 25 October that year married Austrian Fred J. Bock-Bordy in New York City, living there at 17 Chittenden Ave.^[4] He later became a US citizen but she did not. She studied at the School of Modem Photography (SMP), established in 1939 at 487 Park Avenue, New York.^[5]

Fluent in Russian, English, French, German and Spanish, she approached the United Nations for work before it opened and she was one of the first two, and later was among four, press photographers employed in New York. By 1960 she had worked for fifteen years in the Films and Visual Information Section of the United Nations Secretariat in its Department of Public Information (DPI), established in 1946.^[2] As appropriate to a given assignment, she used 35mm Nikons and Leicas, and a larger format 4"x 5" Speed Graphic press camera.

Her photographs were widely distributed, first to 35 UN information centres worldwide, and published in a variety of media in the form of press releases,^[6][7] posters and booklets,^[8][9][10] and as educational film strips (a mid-century multimedia format).^[3]

Bordy herself proved newsworthy. A Bombay Chronicle Weekly provides an account of her approach to photographing major political figures at the UN;

"Miss Maria Bordy of Russia, a U. N. photographer, described by the Agency as "pretty" [brought] Sir Zafrullah Khan and Mr. N. Gopalaswamy Ayyangar together by her smile. It appears that she made these two gladiators in the arena of United Nations pose together several times, and in one of the pictures, Mr. Ayyangar is reported to have put his arm round Zafrullah Khan and remarked: "Soon she will ask us to kiss." [ … ] this delightful young lady’s parting comment at the end of the performance...: "You see, if you have me around, YOU DO NOT NEED THE U. N. O."^[11]

She was mentioned also in a Bell Syndicate feature on women at the United Nations as a "tiny Russian photographer on Audrey Langston's staff, who speaks five languages and chalked up some kind of a record when she not only got 8 good picture of camera shy Soviet Delegate Andrei Gromyko, but also made him smile. Her ambition is studio of her own."^[12][13] She was also interviewed about her work and the UN on WKOK on 24 February 1949.^[14]