Olive R. Pierce, 90, a resident of Rockland and Marsh Island, died May 23.
Olive photographed in Massachusetts and Maine for over 40 years. In the 1960s, she documented conditions at a Cambridge housing project and hearings regarding allegations of police brutality and affordable housing before the Cambridge City Counsel. Her photographs of students at the Cambridge Rindge & Latin School, Cambridge, Mass. were published in a 1986 book entitled No Easy Roses: A Look at the Lives of City Teenagers. Thereafter, Olive spent 10 years documenting a lobster fishing community in Maine, and in 1996, published Up River: The Story of a Maine Fishing Village.
In 1999, she traveled to Iraq to document the plight of children suffering under economic sanctions. Twice named a fellow at the Bunting Institute at Harvard, her work is in the collection at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Addison Gallery of American Art, Andover, Mass.; the Portland Museum of Art, Portland; and the Farnsworth Museum, Rockland. Her photographs have been exhibited in approximately 20 one-person shows since 1964.
Her last show, Olive Pierce: Photographing A Maine Fishing Community, was exhibited from October 2015 through January 2016, at the Bowdoin College Museum of Art, Brunswick. In 2002, she was featured as part of the Maine Masters series, broadcast on Maine Public Broadcasting Network. In 2007, her work was archived at the Rare Book, Manuscript and Special Collections Library and featured at an exhibit entitled, Retrospective: 40 Years of Work, at Duke University, Durham, N.C.
Olive often used her photography to sharpen viewers’ attention to social issues. For example, in 2003, the Bridges for Peace movement organized over 1,000 people on 35 bridges throughout Maine to protest the Iraq war. These protests gave rise to counter protesters who supported the war, and at times angry and physical confrontations between the two groups. Olive documented both groups and in June 2013 organized an exhibit of her photographs at the Damariscotta American Legion hall, which was attended by approximately 100 people from both sides of the issue. Olive intended the event as an opportunity to talk and to build respect between the groups and at the end the Legion auxiliary president embraced the organizer of the protest movement.
Olive is survived by sister, Sarah Bradshaw of Brookline, Mass.; children, Laurence Pierce and Anne Pierce of Cambridge, Mass., and Elizabeth Pierce of Arlington, Mass.; as well as six grandchildren.