Marion Warren bought his first camera in 1938 when he was seventeen years old so that he could take pictures of his classmates for his high school yearbook. The awkward young man who had experienced many hardships throughout childhood and adolescence suddenly discovered a talent that both surprised and delighted him. With minimal formal education in photography, he won a series of jobs working in commercial studios in St. Louis. In his free time he wandered the city and the nearby countryside with his camera. The images he took then reveal a surprising early mastery of his art.Enlistment in the U.S. Navy in 1942 brought new opportunities when Marion Warren landed a three-year assignment in the Department of the Navy’s Office of Public Relations in Washington, D.C. This experience sparked a deep and abiding awareness of the crucial part photography can play in creating vital visual documentation of day-to-day history. He regularly shot portraits of top Navy brass and events at the White House. He also developed film delivered fresh from Pacific and European engagements, including a roll that contained the raising of the flag at Iwo Jima. And he met two people who would play pivotal roles in his career. Mary Giblin, the woman he would marry, was a WAVE in the Navy. She was assigned to write captions for him the night they met, a job she excelled at for more than forty years. He also worked in close proximity to yachtsman Carleton Mitchell, who invited Marion Warren and his family to move to Annapolis, Maryland, so that the young photographer could continue to assist Mitchell as he produced books and articles.