Trailblazing First Female Staff Photographer at ‘The Washington Post’ Dies

Margaret Thomas (above) was the first female photographer at The Washington Post.

Margaret Thomas, the first female staff photographer employed by The Washington Post, has died at the age of 84.

Thomas, who spent four decades at the newspaper, died at her home in Hume, Virginia, in the foothills of the Blue Ridge Mountains. Her niece Teri Mathews confirmed her death and says the cause has not yet been determined.

According to an obituary published by The Washington Post, Thomas was born in Moose Lake, Minnesota, in 1941. She studied photography at Ohio University and earned a Master of Fine Arts degree in 1965.

Less than seven months after graduating, Thomas joined The Washington Post. At the time, the newsroom was expanding beyond its largely White, male workforce following the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which prohibited workplace discrimination based on race, sex, and religion. Although Thomas was hired when she was just 24 years old, she later learned that some male photographers at the newspaper had urged photography director Richard Darcey not to employ her.

Thomas spent her first six months on probation, working mainly in the darkroom developing film rather than taking photographs. She was later mentored by fellow Minnesotan Tom Kelley, who had been a photographer at The Washington Post since the 1930s, and soon began receiving assignments.

According to the news outlet’s obituary, on one of her first assignments, Thomas found herself pushed to the back of a crowd of male photographers. Thomas responded by using a technique she had learned from acclaimed Life magazine photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White and it would a method she continued to rely on throughout her career.

“I dropped to my knees and wiggled my way through a sea of legs, until I reached the front of the scrum and shot my photos from a lower perspective,” Thomas recalled, according to The Washington Post. “I kept that technique in my bag of tricks for the duration of my career.”

During her 40 years at the newspaper, Thomas photographed riots, international conflicts, global summits, the Watergate hearings, and presidential politics. She also received numerous honors from the White House News Photographers Association, including its Photographer of the Year award in 1987.

Years of holding a camera upright with her elbows bent while waiting for the right moment to take photographs eventually took its toll on her body. Thomas developed pain and numbness in her right elbow and hand and later underwent procedures to treat elbow inflammation and carpal tunnel syndrome.

After leaving The Washington Post, Thomas studied for a doctorate at the University of Texas at Austin. She completed a dissertation on the history of women in news photography and earned her Ph.D. in 2007, a year after formally retiring. Her archive is now held at the university’s Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

Even in retirement, Thomas continued taking photographs, covering hunts and other equestrian events near her home in Virginia.

Thomas also met her husband canoeist David Thomas on one of her first assignments for The Washington Post where she was commissioned to take pictures from a canoe in the Potomac River. David approached her to help steady her boat and stop her from falling overboard. They married in 1967 and remained together until his death in 2021.

Image creditsHeader photo via Moser Funeral Home.