Marguerite Oswald

Diane Arbus, artist

1923–1971

Marguerite Oswald, 1964

Portfolio/Series title: "Lee Oswald’s Letters to his Mother (with footnotes by Mrs. Oswald)," published in Esquire

Where object was made: United States

Material/technique: gelatin silver print

Dimensions:
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 21.2 x 18.8 cm
Image Dimensions Height/Width (Height x Width): 8 3/8 x 7 3/8 in
Mat Dimensions (Height x Width): 19 x 14 in

Credit line: Gift of Esquire, Inc.

Accession number: 1980.0231

Not on display

Add to portfolio

If you wish to reproduce this image, please submit an image request

Images

Label texts

Politics, Race, Celebrity: Photographs from the Esquire Collection

Esquire published a set of handwritten letters by Lee Harvey Oswald less than a year after he assassinated President John F. Kennedy and was killed while in police custody. The letters were written to his mother and sent from the Soviet Union. Oswald had received a “hardship discharge” from the United States Marine Corps to better take care of his sick mother, but soon thereafter
defected to the Soviet Union. Marguerite Oswald shared the letters from her son in an attempt to defend and explain her son’s “so-called defection.” Mrs. Oswald said she believed in her son’s innocence regarding the Kennedy assassination, concluding, “I heard him say he didn’t do it so that’s enough for me whether it’s my son or any other man.” Marguerite Oswald seemed to seek publicity and profit as the mother of Lee Harvey Oswald, the slain assassin of the President of the United States. Her dual persona as aggrieved mother and national outcast was an apt subject for Diane Arbus, who earned her fame photographing social and cultural outsiders.