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Masha Arms was invited to the Maryland home of author and journalist Marquis Childs and his wife, Lue Prentiss Childs, to photograph the family. Their daughter, Malissa Childs Elliot (1929-1979), later wrote novels under the pseudonym Malissa Redfield. Originally from Fitchburg, Massachusetts, Masha Arms arrived in Washington, DC, during the Great Depression. After buying a Model G Leica camera in 1934 and teaching herself about the technical aspects of photography, she landed a job teaching photography at the King-Smith Studio School in 1936. Masha Arms' work was published in a 1936 Washington Post review of the Junior League Gallery exhibition alongside photographs by Ansel Adams and Margaret Bourke-White. In 1941, when the United States entered World War II, Masha left Washington, married William Tyler Arms of Deerfield, Massachusetts, and moved back to New England.

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