Bio: Marion Patterson, a native of San Francisco, has been seriously involved in photography since 1956 when she began studies at the San Francisco Art Institute with such luminaries as Dorothea Lange and Minor White. From 1958-1961 she worked for Virginia and Ansel Adams in Yosemite and has remained closely associated with the Adams family since then. From 1961-1964 she was assistant to the Photography Editor of Sunset Magazine. While at Sunset, she prepared her first major exhibit, which was shown at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art in 1965. Living in Oaxaca, Mexico for a year resulted in another one-woman exhibit at the Oakland Museum in 1966. In 1968 she began teaching at Foothill and De Anza Colleges, later becoming chair of the Foothill photography program.

She currently teaches workshops for UC Santa Cruz Extension. Her photographs have been widely published and exhibited nationally and in Mexico, Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands. Her monograph of 57 photographs, Grains of Sand, was published by Stanford Press in 2002.