Louisville Flood Victims 1937

In 1921, she began college at Rutgers, then moved to the University of Michigan, then to Cornell University, from which she graduated in 1927. As a freshman at Michigan, she began taking pictures for the yearbook, and within a year was offered the seat of photography editor. Instead of taking the position, she married a engineering graduate student, Everett Chapman, and abandoned photography to pursue married life. When the marriage fell apart two years later, she moved to Cornell, where she again took up photography. After she graduated in 1927, she moved to Cleveland, where her family was living, to start her career with a portfolio full of architecture pictures she had taken while at Cornell. She called upon several architects who were Cornell alumni for jobs. After the success of her first job, she founded the Bourke-White studio in her one room apartment. Then, money she made from shooting elegant home and gardens by day was spent on photographing steel mills at night and on the weekends. The circulation of her portfolio brought her to the attention of Cleveland's biggest industrial tycoons. After a few failures, she was successful at capturing the Otis Steel mill. From this, she made enough money to move her studio to the Terminal Tower skyscraper. In the spring of 1929, she received a telegram from Henry R. Luce, a publisher who was planning a new weekly magazine called Time. Luce invited her to come to New York so they could meet, and so Bourke-White could see what Time was to accomplish. She was unimpressed, but Luce and his editor Parker Lloyd- Smith were also planning a new business magazine that would make use of dramatic industrial photographs. This was perfect for Bourke-White. She accepted their offer as a staff photographer. In July1929, the decision was made to publish the magazine, called Fortune. Bourke-White began working on stories for the premier issue, eight months away. The first lead story was to feature Swift & Co., a hog processing plant. She worked with Lloyd-Smith until he became too sick from the stench to continue. After Bourke-White was finished photographing the hogs, she left most of her camera equipment to be burned. Her documentation of this was a step in the development of the photo essay, and Bourke-White's style.

In 1930, Russia was in the midst of an industrial and cultural revolution. It's doors were all but closed to westerners, especially photographers. Bourke-White was attracted to Russia, but her editors at Fortune doubted that she would gain access. They instead sent her to Germany to photograph the emerging industry there.

  


Young Fascist 1937

She decided that she would go on her own, and after six weeks of waiting, her visa had cleared the Soviet bureaucracy. She loaded up her cameras along with trunks of food, and set off on the Trans-Siberian Railway. Russia was full of red tape for Bourke-White. Fortunately for her, an official was so impressed with her portfolio that he granted her a permit requiring all Soviet citizens to aid and assist Bourke-White whenever she needed it. Over the next five weeks, she traveled all over Russia, capturing dams, factories, farms, and their workers. She had taken nearly three thousand negatives of Russia, the first complete documentary of the newly emerging Soviet Russia. In the summer of 1931, she was invited back to Russia by the government. This time through Russia, she concentrated not on machinery, but on people. The New York Times Sunday Magazine published six articles that she had written about the trip, along with her photographs. In the summer of 1932, Bourke-White went back to Russia, this time to film. This trip, however, was mainly a failure, since Bourke- White was not technically adept and hadn't learned the skill of seeing in motion. As a result, her films did not have the same feeling her photographs had. She tried to sell the footage to a Hollywood studio, but they would not buy it because of their fear that it would be seen as propaganda.

Self Portrait With Erskine Caldwell Holiday Greeting Card 1940 / 1941

In 1936, Bourke-white toured the south with the writer Erskine Caldwell to supply the pictures for the book ‘You Have Seen Their Faces’. The book was a photo documentary of the poor, rural people of the south. Later in 1936, Henry Luce decided to launch a picture magazine, spurred on by the success of European picture tabloids. In this magazine, pictures wouldn't be subservient to the text; the pictures would tell the story. The magazine was called Life and Bourke-White was one of the four original photographers hired. She covered everything from the New Deal towns springing up in the Midwest to the growing conflict in Europe. In early 1941, tensions were running high in Europe, and Life asked her to return to Russia, to make a comparison between the current Russia and the one that she saw ten years before. Bourke-White and Caldwell entered Russia though China. On July 22nd, the first bombs fell on Moscow and Bourke-White was the only foreign photographer present. The resulting pictures were a major scoop for Bourke-White and Life. She spent the next four years covering the European theater of war, it's leaders, and the aftermath of the Nazi death camps. She also flew in American bombers on their bombing raids, taking pictures of the destruction.

After the war, in 1946, she was sent by Life to cover the emerging countries of Pakistan and India. She photographed Mahatma Gandhi many times, taking her last picture of him hours before he was assassinated. From 1950 to 1956, Bourke-White returned to Life and covered everything from the Korean War to South African gold mines to the Connecticut River Valley.

South African Miners 1950

In 1956, Bourke-White discovered she had Parkinson's Disease. After doing research on the disease, she believed that it manifested itself while she was in Korea, racing against a deadline. In 1958, a experimental procedure for easing the effects of Parkinson's was preformed on Bourke-White. The operation was successful, and Bourke-White resumed working for Life, but as a writer. Her friend and colleague Alfred Eisenstaedt was the photographer. Together they covered the same type of surgery Bourke- White had undergone. Bourke-White then asked the editors to put her story into Life , but they were apprehensive. They eventually yielded, and the story was hugely popular. However, in 1961, Parkinson's once again reached her right side, and another operation was preformed. This time it was successful, but it made speech laborious. She began writing, finishing her autobiography, ‘Portrait of Myself’.

In 1971 Bourke-White fell and injured herself badly. This accident was one of the great dangers of Parkinson's. Bourke-White was confined to a hospital bed. This immobility brought on complications, and Bourke-White died on August 21st, 1971, at the age of sixty seven.

Margaret Bourke-White contributed many things to the world of photography. She was a woman, doing a man's job, in a man's world, from the foundries of Cleveland to the battlefields in World War II. She was an original staff photographer for two of the most prominent magazines of her day, Fortune and Life. She led a life full of adventure, pioneering a new art form: photojournalism. Margaret Bourke-White was, and still is, one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century.
                                                                                            

Margaret Bourke-White
The Movie "Double Exposure", Starring Farrah Fawcett,
Chronicles Her Life.