Although her many photographic series and projects, created not only in New York but also on her travels across the U.S. and which consist of a huge collection of more than a thousand images, held today at the Center for Creative Photography, the life and work of Marion Palfi is very little studied. In 2021 a first solo retrospective Freedom Must Be Lived: Marion Palfi’s America, 1940–1978 was hosted at the Phoenix Art Museum in collaboration with the Center for Creative Photography. The images featured were made several decades ago, but continue to have relevance at a time when racism, discrimination, political violence and poverty still exist and raise awareness of the need for tolerant coexistence in our societies.

Marion Palfi's first exile stop, in the late 1930s, was Amsterdam (Netherlands), where she had her own portrait studio. In 1940, she arrived with her husband in New York. Few details are known of her early days in the city. She was given her first assignment as a photofinisher by Pavelle Laboratories, which was founded by the émigré Leo Pavelle. Her first apartment was located on East 53rd Street on the corner with 3rd Avenue (today's Lexington Avenue), where she had a darkroom situated between the living room and the kitchen. (Berkowitz 1949) She soon began photographing for herself in New York and used her camera as a medium for studying and working on social and political issues. In 1945 she had her first solo exhibition at the Norlyst Gallery. Also in 1945, the Great American Artists of Minority Groups exhibition was sponsored by the Council Against Intolerance in America and it is possible that photographic series created by Palfi, of the émigré sculptor Chaim Gross and the graphic artist Leon Helguera in 1944, were shown.

Through the exhibition she met such people as the poet Langston Hughes, Eleanor Roosevelt, Edward Steichen, John Collier and the émigré photographer Lisette Model, who later became part of her network. During the 1940s Marion Palfi made a series on Langston Hughes and his family. As Marion Palfi became a member of the Photo League, a school and association of photographers who used the camera to engage in socio-political activities, it can be guessed that she had connections in both the émigré and New York photo and art scenes.

From the 1940s, she produced several series in New York. All portraits and series must be read within the context of social and ethnic life and also the social engagement of people fighting social discrimination in Help and Aid Centers and Institutions in New York. Examples would be Girl Gang and Boys’ Gang in New York of the Henry Street Settlement House, the Syndenham Hospital, everyday scenes of children and teenagers living in New York, the Children’s Court or the New York Training School for Girls, Hudson, New York.
All these portraits and series represent their own microhistories and have to be read within the context of their social, political and ethnic histories and the struggle of minorities and outsiders for social justice. As she herself had arrived in New York as an émigré and a woman photographer - both also minority groups - , it can be argued that she felt solidarity with her subjects and used photography as a medium to narrate and illustrate the messages she wished to convey. This is also the case for the portrait series she made of the Japanese-American dancer Sono Osato.
Palfi's photographs of the Henry Street Settlement House, which was located in the Lower East Side and provide opportunities for the residents through social services, arts and health programs, were published in the first issue of Ebony magazine, the first magazine to feature the work of African-American and minority group artists. One of her photographs, but mirror inverted, was featured on the cover (Ebony, 1 November 1945). Other female émigrés photographers as Ellen Auerbach, Erika Stone or Lilly Joss Reich and Ruth Staudinger also made series about the urban life of the gender, social and ethnic diversity on the streets of New York City.

In 1948 some of Marion Palfi’s photographs were also part of the In and Out of Focus exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art. Other émigré photographers who were represented there were Josef Breitenbach, Andres Feininger, Fritz Goro (the husband of Carola Gregor), Lotte Jacobi, Lisette Model and Ylla.

On analysing portraits by Marion Palfi it can be recognised that she took them from different angles while capturing the personal and unique lives of her sbubjects in a human and equal way, making no distinction between ethnicities or socio-cultural identities. She often photographed people from the side or from an unusual perspective, in detailed shots or cut-outs – a photographic style and aesthetic reminiscent of the New Vision in 1920s' Germany. After studying theatre and dance in Berlin in the 1920s, Marion Palfi appeared as an actress and model in several films, including the musical Laterna Magica – auch eine Revue (1926, Friedrich Hollaender), in which the actress Valeska Gert also took part (Siedhoff 2018). Valeska Gert emigrated in 1939 via London to New York, where, in 1941, she opened her artists bar and cabaret Beggar Bar. Besides herself, other émigré artists were also given the opportunity to perform there. In addition to her theatre and dance work, Marion Palfi started to practice photography and began working as a retoucher in a small Berlin photo studio during the 1920s.

Her first portraits chimed with the mood of the 1920s, when conventional modes of viewing were abandoned in favour of unconventional perspectives and artistic cut outs; it was also a time when the role of women was starting to change. Several of Palfi's portraits from this time, and from her later exile in Amsterdam, show these artistic aesthetic stylistics. During the 1930s she did some commissioned work and montages, and her photographs appeared in Die Deutsche Illustrierte. She may also have been in contact with the fashion and sports photographer Martin Munkacsi, who also lived in Berlin at the time and later emigrated to New York, where he was able to pursue his career as a photographer. At the end of the 1930s Marion Palfi moved to Amsterdam, where she opened a small portrait and photo studio. From the archive of the Center of Creative Photography and with the help of the estate of Anita Naef, some portraits of Klaus Mann can be identified, taken during his time in exile in 1933. (Töppelmann 2000)

Throughout her entire life, Marion Palfi worked and photographed in series on specific topics, recording in her manuscripts the research and preparations she undertook. One of her first projects, funded in 1946 by a Julius Rosenwald Fellowship grant, focused on the experiences of children living in extreme poverty and she spent two years travelling throughout the U.S. Under the title Children In America, this series was shown in libraries, schools, colleges, and universities – and also at the New York Public Library. Out of this project came in 1952 her book, Suffer Little Children, which was published by Oceana Publications. A review of the book was written by her lifelong acquaintance, Eleanor Roosevelt, who honoured her project and the importance of the subject. Other projects in the following years were: There is No More Time (1949–1952), Children in America (1949–1952), In These Ten Cities (1950/51), Curacao (1953), One Month in Mexico (1955), You Have Never Been Old (1956–1958), Gangler Circus (1961), That May Affect Their Hearts and Minds (1963–1967), The Esau Jenkins Story (1963-1967), First I Liked the Whites, I gave them fruits (1967–1969).

From 1959 Marion Palfi also worked at the New School for Social Research and gave courses in photography in combination with her social research and fieldwork. Her workshops, lectures and courses included: “Social Uses in Photography”, “Social Research with Photography”, “The Photographer as a Human”, “The Exact Moment” and, in 1958/59, the social geriatrics study You Have Never Been Old. Other émigré colleagues at the New School for Social Research were Charles Leirens, Lisette Model, Tim Gidal, Kurt Safranski, Josef Breitenbach and Alexey Brodovitch.