Margaret Bourke-White
Personal Information
Born: 1904
Died: 1971
Country of Birth: USA
Nationality: USA
Ethnicity: White
Education
Cornell University BA Biology 1927
""To me... industrial forms were all the more beautiful because they were never designed to be beautiful. They had a simplicity of line that came from their direct application of purpose. Industry... had evolved an unconscious beauty – often a hidden beauty that was waiting to be discovered" (wikipedia); ‘On the sixty-first floor [of the Chrysler Building], the workmen started building some curious structures which overhung 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue below. When I learned these were to be gargoyles à la Notre Dame, but made of stainless steel as more suitable for the twentieth century, I decided that here would be my new studio. There was no place in the world that I would accept as a substitute.’ (wikipedia); in discussing her arrival at Buchenwald she said, "Using a camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." (wikipedia); “The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.” (moma.org); "I feel that my experimental work at Otis Steel was more important to me than any other single thing in my photographic development". (theartstory.org); "in my case running away began when I was such a tiny girl - I usually managed to negotiate a block or two before Mother caught up with me - that she began dressing me in a bright red sweater with a sign sewed on the back: 'My name is Margaret Bourke-White. I live at 210 North Mountain Avenue [...] Please bring me home.' This amused passers-by so much that I stopped running away, but I never stopped wanting to travel". (theartstory.org); "I wouldn't want to change any of my life even if I had the chance, because it's been the life I wanted [...] I think I've been particularly fortunate; even my two broken marriages and the illness have been important to my own growth and development". (theartstory.org); "
— Margaret Bourke-White
Professional Life
Field of Study: Photojournalism
Institution/Corporation: None found
Degrees & Memberships: Honorary Degree: Rutgers University (1948); University of Michigan (1951); Member: Alpha Omicron Pi
Awards & Achievements
Awards: 1963 Achievement Award, US Camera; 1964 Honor Roll Award, American Society of Magazine Photographers; 1990 National Women's Hall of Fame; 1992 Women's History Month Honoree; 1994 National Women's History Project Honoree; 2016 International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum; 2015 Connecticut Women's Hall of Fame
Achievements: best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry under the Soviets' first five-year plan (1930), as the first American female war photojournalist, and for taking the photograph (of the construction of Fort Peck Dam) that became the cover of the first issue of Life magazine; 1930 was hired to photograph the construction of the Chrysler Building in NYC; 1936 was hired as the first female photojournalist at Life magazine; mid-1930s photographed drought victims of the Dust Bowl; collaborated with novelist Erskine Caldwell to produce the book "You Have Seen Their Faces" (1937) about poor communities in the south; started the first photography laboratory at Life magazine; was associated with the early 20th century art movement Precisionism;
1922 dropped out of Columbia University after 1 semester because of the death of her father
attended University of Michigan, Purdue University & Western reserve University but obtained no degree from any of them
left a photographic study of the rural campus for the school's newspaper, including photographs of her famed dormitory, Risley Hall after graduating from Cornell University
1928 moved from Ithaca, New York, to Cleveland, Ohio, where she started a commercial photography studio and began concentrating on architectural and industrial photography
traveled to Europe to record how Germany, Austria, and Czechoslovakia were faring under Nazism
while in Russia photographed Joseph Stalin, as well as making portraits of Stalin's mother and great-aunt when visiting Georgia
1943 was the first female photographer/writer to fly on a combat mission
was known to the Life staff as 'Maggie the Indestructible'" because she had been torpedoed in the Mediterranean, strafed by the Luftwaffe, stranded on an Arctic island, bombarded in Moscow, and pulled out of the Chesapeake when her chopper crashed
was on the the England-Africa bound British troopship SS Strathallan when it was torpedoed & chronicled the events & her subsequent voyage in a lifeboat in the article, "Women in Lifeboats", in Life, February 22, 1943
disliked by General Dwight D Eisenhower, she became friendly with his chauffeur/secretary, Irishwoman Kay Summersby & they shared a lifeboat after the sinking of the SS Strathallan
1945 traveled throughout a collapsing Germany with Gen. George S. Patton
after WWII she produced a book entitled "Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly," a project that helped her come to grips with the brutality she had witnessed during and after the war
has been called "one of the most effective chroniclers" of the violence that erupted at the 1947 independence and partition of India and Pakistan (wikipedia)
interviewed and photographed Mohandas K. Gandhi just a few hours before his assassination in 1948
1953 developed her first symptoms of Parkinson's disease
her autobiography, Portrait of Myself, was published in 1963
her photographs are in the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the New Mexico Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York, as well as in the collection of the Library of Congress
she created two short travel films about Russia
at fifteen turned a summer job as a camp counselor into a photography business by photographing the campers next to their bunks and sending the printed cards to the campers’ families for five cents a card