Margaret+Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White Margaret Bourke-White was a famous photojournalist who is best known as the first female foreign photographer to be given permission to document the soviet industry, along with being the first female war correspondent allowed to photograph in combat zones during World War Two. She also took the picture that was on the cover of the first Life magazine in 1936, and was the magazine’s first woman photographer. Bourke-White has photos in the [|Brooklyn Museum], the [|Cleveland Museum of Art] , the [|Museum of Modern Art] in New York, and the [|Library of Congress]. She was also portrayed by Candice Bergen in the 1982 movie //Gandhi//, and by Farrah Fawcett in the TV movie //Double Exposure: The Story of Margaret Bourke-White// in 1989. Margaret White, who in 1927 added her mother’s maiden name to hers, was born on June 14th, 1904 in the Bronx, New York, and spent her childhood growing up in Bound Brook, New Jersey. Her parents were Joseph White, an inventor and engineer, and Minnie Bourke, a homemaker who was in the process of completing her college degree at the end of her life. She had one brother, Roger, and a sister, Ruth. Stemming from her father’s interest in cameras, at an early age, Margaret developed an interest in photography, which her parents, described as “Free thinkers” by her brother Roger, encouraged. In 1922, Margaret attended Columbia University, where her interest in photography began to flourish. She left the university after only one semester however, after the death of her father. In 1924 she was married to Everett Chapman, although the couple divorced after just two years. She later in 1939 married Erskine Caldwell, best selling novelist, after collaborating on the book //You Have Seen Their Faces,// and the two separated in 1942//.// Bourke-White attended several colleges, finally graduating from Cornell University in 1927 with a degree in herpetology. Soon after graduating, she moved to Ithaca, New York, where she began to build a career in industrial photography. Margaret was a people person, which helped her to advance in her field. As an industrial and architectural photographer, she began to work at taking pictures of the Otis Steel Mill, where she was given a challenge, for steel was an industry which affected national security, and also because many believed a woman wasn’t fit for the job of navigating a dirty and dangerous mill. To combat the problems caused by light in this factory, she made use of a new type of magnesium flare, which creates white light. These pictures received national attention as some of the best of the category and time, and showed Bourke-White’s potential as a talented photojournalist. As a photojournalist, Margaret Bourke-White covered many significant events of the twentieth century. These included documentation of World War Two, the Dust Bowl, the Korean War, and the violence which occurred when India and Pakistan separated. In 1941, during World War Two, she traveled to the Soviet Union at the time when Germany broke it’s pact of non-aggression, and was in Moscow when the German army invaded, where she was able to document it on film. During the war, she additionally went to Northern Africa, where she survived a torpedo attack, Italy, and Germany, where she traveled with famed general George S. Patton. During this trip, Bourke-White arrived at the concentration camp Buchenwald, where she photographed the terrible conditions endured by the Jews and other minorities. After these experiences, she put together a collection of pictures in a book, titled //Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly//. Margaret Bourke-White was very against racial inequality and the violence which occurred because of it. During the separation of India and Pakistan, Margaret captured images of corpse ridden streets and refugees of the destruction. In addition to witnessing these events, she photographed and interviewed Mohandas Gandhi soon before he was assassinated in January 1948. During the Korean War, she took what she considered as her best photograph, of the meeting of a returning soldier and his mother, who previously thought he had been killed. Margaret Bourke-White retired from her career as a significant photojournalist in 1969. During the span of her career, she witnessed violence, destruction, and was even a target of the famous Joe McCarthy and the House of Un-American Activities Committee, who accused a number of well known Americans of being members of the Communist Party. In 1953, Margaret was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. During her later years suffering from the disease, she was unable to take photographs, and so in 1963 wrote her autobiography //Portrait of Myself.// Although she underwent several operations to combat her disease, Margaret Bourke White died on August 27, 1971 in Stamford, Connecticut, at age 67, leaving behind a legacy of work that documented her eventful and extraordinary life.