Liliane de Cock

Liliane de Cock Morgan (September 11, 1939 — May 25, 2013) was a Belgian-born American photographer who won a Guggenheim Fellowship in 1972, and was assistant to Ansel Adams.

Early life

Liliane de Cock was born near Antwerp, Belgium and spent much of her early childhood in an orphanage to be protected from bombs during World War II. She worked in factories as a teenager, including a factory that made photographic materials; she moved to America at age 21, in 1960.

Career

Liliane de Cock was photographic assistant to Ansel Adams from 1963 to 1972, especially on Fiat Lux, a book of photographs marking the centennial of the University of California. In 1972, she became a Guggenheim fellow and began showing her own work in New York. Adams wrote the introduction to her first book of photographs in 1973. Her photographs were also exhibited at the George Eastman House, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art in the 1970s.

After her marriage, she edited photography books for publication, judged photography competitions, and was a photographic printer. Her last solo exhibition was in Belgium in 1991. She was recognized as one of "the most important female photographers alive" in 1996.

Personal life

Liliane de Cock married publisher Douglas O. Morgan, in 1972, at a ceremony performed in Ansel Adams' home in Carmel, California. Her mother-in-law was dance photographer Barbara Morgan. They had one son, Willard, and divorced in 1993.

She retired in 2010, and died from cancer in 2013, at Wiscasset, Maine, age 73. Works by Liliane de Cock are held in the collections of the Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena Museum of California Art, Dallas Museum of Art, and the Amon Carter Museum of American Art.