Margaret Bourke-White: Difference between revisions
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[[Image:Stamp-ctc-life-magazine.jpg|right|thumb|USPS stamp depicting Life magazine cover bearing Fort Peck Dam photograph]] |
[[Image:Stamp-ctc-life-magazine.jpg|right|thumb|USPS stamp depicting Life magazine cover bearing Fort Peck Dam photograph]] |
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Bourke-White was the first female [[war correspondent]] and the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during [[World War II]]. |
Bourke-White was the first female [[war correspondent]] and the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during [[World War II]]. In 1941 she travelled to Russia just as Germany broke it's pact of non-aggression with the Soviet Union. She was the only foreign photographer in Moscow, when German forces invaded. Escaping to the U.S. Embassy she then captured the ensuing firestorms on camera. |
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As the war progressed she was then attached to the US army air force, in North Africa, then to the US Army, in Italy and then Germany. She repeatedly came under fire in Italy, in areas of fierce fighting. |
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By the spring of 1945 she travelled through a collapsing Germany, with General George Patton. In this period she arrived at [[Buchenwald]], the notorious concentration camp. She is quoting as saying "Using a camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." After the war she then produced another book "Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly", a project that helped her understand the brutality she had witnessed. |
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During the 1950s, Bourke-White was diagnosed with [[Parkinson's disease]], and she died in [[Connecticut]], aged 65. |
During the 1950s, Bourke-White was diagnosed with [[Parkinson's disease]], and she died in [[Connecticut]], aged 65. |
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Revision as of 20:53, 4 May 2006
Margaret Bourke-White (June 14, 1904 – August 27, 1971) was an American photographer and photo journalist. She was born in the Bronx, New York, to Joseph White (who came from an Orthodox Jewish family) and Minnie Bourke, the daughter of an Irish ship's carpenter and an English cook; she was a Protestant.
Margaret grew up in Bound Brook, New Jersey.
In 1922, she began studying herpetology at Columbia University, where she developed an interest in photography after studying under Clarence White. In 1925, she married Everett Chapman, but the couple divorced a year later. After switching colleges several times (University of Michigan, Purdue University in Indiana, and Western Reserve University in Cleveland, Ohio), Margaret graduated from Cornell University in 1927. A year later, she moved to Cleveland, Ohio, where she became an industrial photographer at the Otis Steel Company.
In 1929, she accepted a job as associate editor for Fortune magazine. In 1930, she became the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union. She was hired by Henry Luce as the first female photojournalist for Life magazine.
Her photographs of the construction of the Fort Peck Dam were featured in the first issue, dated November 23, 1936, including the cover. This cover photograph became such an iconic (see [[1]]) image that it was featured as the 1930s representative to the United States Postal Service's Celebrate the Century series of commemorative postage stamps.
During the mid-1930s, Bourke-White, like Dorothea Lange, photographed drought victims of the Dust Bowl. Bourke-White was married to novelist Erskine Caldwell from 1939 to 1942, and together they collaborated on You Have Seen Their Faces (1937).
Bourke-White was the first female war correspondent and the first woman to be allowed to work in combat zones during World War II. In 1941 she travelled to Russia just as Germany broke it's pact of non-aggression with the Soviet Union. She was the only foreign photographer in Moscow, when German forces invaded. Escaping to the U.S. Embassy she then captured the ensuing firestorms on camera.
As the war progressed she was then attached to the US army air force, in North Africa, then to the US Army, in Italy and then Germany. She repeatedly came under fire in Italy, in areas of fierce fighting.
By the spring of 1945 she travelled through a collapsing Germany, with General George Patton. In this period she arrived at Buchenwald, the notorious concentration camp. She is quoting as saying "Using a camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." After the war she then produced another book "Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly", a project that helped her understand the brutality she had witnessed.
During the 1950s, Bourke-White was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease, and she died in Connecticut, aged 65.
She was portrayed by Farrah Fawcett in a television movie and by Candice Bergen in the 1982 film Gandhi.
Some Books by Margaret Bourke-White
- You Have Seen Their Faces (1937; with Erskine Caldwell) ISBN 082031692X
- North of the Danube (1939; with Erskine Caldwell) ISBN 0306708779
- Shooting the Russian War (1942)
- They Called it "Purple Heart Valley" (1944)
- Halfway to Freedom; a report on the new India (1949)
- Portrait of Myself (1963) ISBN 0671594346
- Dear Fatherland, rest quietly (1946)
- The Taste of War (selections from her writings edited by Jonathon Silverman) ISBN 0712610308
- Say, Is This the USA? (Republished 1977) ISBN 0306774348
- The Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White ISBN 0517166038
Biographies and Collections of Margaret Bourke-White Photographs
- Margaret Bourke-White: Photography of Design, 1927-1936 ISBN 0847825051
- Margaret Bourke White ISBN 0810943816
- Margaret Bourke-White: Photographer ISBN 0821224905
- Margaret Bourke-White: Adventurous Photographer ISBN 0531124053
- Power and Paper, Margaret Bourke-White: Modernity and the Documentary Mode ISBN 1881450090