Legends of Photography
A celebration of this brave and hardworking photojournalist, who caught the human side of major events
Margaret Bourke-White was a brave photojournalist who hit her creative peak during the tumultuous events of the 1930s and 1940s. Her genius lay in her ability to communicate the human impact of major world events, such as the Great Depression and Second World War, while delivering beautifully composed and exposed images.
Bourke-White was born in New York City in 1904. She enrolled into Columbia University in 1921 to study herpetology. After attending a photography course at the Clarence H White School of Photography the following year, she decided that photography was her real passion. She eventually graduated from Cornell University with a degree in biology in 1927, and established herself as a professional photographer, opening her first studio in her apartment in Cleveland, Ohio.
Big break
Bourke-White’s big break came in 1929, when she was invited to become Fortune’s first staff photographer by Henry Luce, founder of Time and Fortune magazines. Luce was particularly impressed by her architectural photography and sent her to the Soviet Union, where she became the first foreign photographer to document the sprawling nation’s industry. Eventually she returned to New York and, in 1930, set up a studio in the Chrysler Building. When Luce launched Life magazine in 1936, Bourke-White joined the staff, and one of her images, of Fort Peck Dam, Montana, made it onto the first cover.
Some of Bourke-White’s key projects include Dust Bowl for Fortune in 1934, which led to the publication of You Have Seen Their Faces (1937) – a powerful study of the effects of the Depression on ordinary people. The outbreak of the Second World War also provided opportunities for Bourke-White, who produced a number of photo essays on the conflict in Europe.
She was a woman of firsts: the only Western photographer to witness the German invasion of Moscow in 1941, and the first woman to accompany US Air Force crews on bombing missions in 1942. She travelled with General Patton’s army through Germany in 1945, witnessing the liberation of several concentration camps. In the immediate post-war years, she covered major international stories, including Gandhi’s fight for Indian independence and the Korean War.
Sadly Bourke-White’s later years were more troubled; she developed Parkinson’s disease in 1953, which effectively ended her photography career, but she continued to be a very respected figure. One of her best quotes about photography goes as follows: ‘Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.’