Born in Columbus, Gaines and her family then moved to Mobile, AL. In 1879, she married Captain Abner Gaines and moved to “Peachwood,” his family’s plantation and nursery at State Line in Wayne County, Mississippi. She developed skills as a photographer during a cultural and artistic movement known as Pictorialism. Her photographs incorporate the stylistic influence of this period by transforming her subjects into works of art.
In 1900, Marion won an award in portraiture from the American Camera Club in Mobile and subsequently became Mississippi’s first woman photographer to be recognized by inclusion of her work in several publications, including Ladies’ Home Journal. In a 1997 issue of Mississippi Magazine, Gene Fant, Jr. described her as a “pioneering photographer” whose “photographs provide…a glimpse of a talented artist’s vision of her surroundings, as well as the images of the toughness of farm life at Peachwood Nursery.”
Photographs depict floral themes in her community and still lifes of various native plants as well as some exotic horticultural varieties. Her photographs also provide unique glimpses of rural life that existed in southern Mississippi during early years of the past century. The photos include African Americans captured in their daily farm chores as well as uniquely posed photos and portraits which reveal stoical character in their faces. Several of her images also include Native American women. Gaines’s interest in photography lessoned after her husband died in 1905. She moved back to Mobile where she lived until her death in 1942.
Source: Mona Vance, Archivist for Local History, Columbus-Lowndes Public Library.