Martin Dain

Martin J. Dain (photograph by Charles Harbutt, courtesy of the Dain family)

Martin Joseph Dain (September 20, 1924 – February 16, 2000) was an American photographer and photojournalist, known best for his photographs of the author William Faulkner. Dain studied photography in Paris, before returning to the United States where he worked as a freelance photographer for major publications including The New York Times and Time Magazine. Dain photographed a wide range of subjects and published 4 books. His photographs are held in collections at the University of Mississippi and the University of Texas at Austin.

Early life and education Dain was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on September 20, 1924, the son of Max Mendel Dain, a pharmacist, and Beatrice Trilling Dain. Both of his parents were of Russian-Jewish heritage. Dain’s father Max was an amateur photographer and Dain would start shooting with his father's Rolleicord camera.

Dain attended high school at the Boston Latin School. where he served as a communications specialist in the Signal Corps during World War II.

In the early 1960s, Dain embarked on a project to capture the world of writer William Faulkner. the first in August 1961, are held in a collection at the University of Texas at Austin's Harry Ransom Center.

Critical reception Of his book, Faulkner's World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain, the Jackson Clarion Ledger said the book "provides context to the land and the people who provided the Nobel Prize winner with the rich vein he mined so well for so long. It is a glorious and painful collection of photographs, rich in detail, emotional in its spareness, connecting the reader with a past that gives clues to our present."

Of the exhibit of photographs from the book at the Birmingham Public Library Gallery, The Birmingham News said Dain's photography "offers an honest, gritty, humorous, and visual interview with time and place.... capturing the informality of this great author [Faulkner]... and recording a small Southern town carefully resting in a time warp".

The Lexington Herald-Leader, referring to the exhibit of the same photographs at the Kentucky Highlands Museum in Ashland, considered the "pictures of Faulkner... the weakest in the exhibit.... But overall the exhibit does work because to look at the pictures is to see Faulkner's inspiration made tangible.

Personal life and death Dain settled in Carmel Valley, California in 1971 where he opened a shop, selling Inuit and Native American artwork and sculptures.

Dain died on February 16, 2000 in Carmel Valley, California. He was 75.

Publications Publication Date Title Publisher Author 1960 A Guide to American Sports Car Racing Hanover House Martin J. Dain (Photography), William S. Stone (Author) 1964 Faulkner's County: Yoknapatawpha Random House Martin J. Dain 1968 On the Beat: Policemen at Work Harcourt Barry Robinson and Martin J. Dain 1997 Faulkner's World: The Photographs of Martin J. Dain University Press of Mississippi Tom Rankin (Editor)