Photographer Marjory Collins may have been the only woman in the room.

It’s the New York Times in 1942: white guys, typewriters, old timey telephones. Shockingly, no one in this fun photo is smoking. The casual-looking reporters are killing time until they’re sent out on an assignment. The rewrite man in the back is getting info over the phone so he can file a report.

The photographer with the great eye responsible for this picture is Marjory Collins (1912-1985), a pioneering female photojournalist who took many other great pictures. The Library of Congress has a biographical sketch of Collins. An excerpt:

“Marjory Collins described herself as a ‘rebel looking for a cause.’ She began her photojournalism career in New York City in the 1930s by working for such magazines as PM and U.S. Camera. At a time when relatively few women were full-time magazine photographers, such major photo agencies as Black Star, Associated Press, PIX, and Time, Inc., all represented her work.

In 1941, Collins joined Roy Stryker‘s team of photographers at the U.S. Office of War Information to document home front activities during World War II. She created remarkable visual stories of small town life, ethnic communities, and women war workers. The more than 3,000 images she took in 1942-43 are preserved in the Farm Security Administration/Office of War Information Collection at the Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division.

After World War II, Collins combined three careers–photographer, editor, and writer. She traveled internationally as a freelance photographer for both the U.S. government and the commercial press. She also participated in social and political causes and was an active feminist who founded the journal Prime Time (1971-76) ‘for and by older women.'”