Background
Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City, New York, United States, on June 14, 1904. She was the daughter of Joseph White (a Jew), and Minnie Bourke (Catholic).
(This is an original 1930 halftone print of a sailor for t...)
This is an original 1930 halftone print of a sailor for the North German Lloyd Line in Germany. The caption reads, "A brief official statement issued in October of this year announced that there were in Germany 3,088,000 persons registered as out of work and seeking jobs." Photography by Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White was born in the Bronx, New York, and her interest in photography was propelled by her father's love of cameras, and her quest for self-improvement. Bourke-White became the first female war correspondent, and the first female photographer for Life magazine. She became the staff photographer and associate editor for Fortune from 1929 to 1935. During World War II, she took images in the combat zones, and was the only foreign photographer in Moscow when the German forces invaded; she was able to capture the ensuing battle. She is known for her images of Gandhi, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Her images portray amazing depth, and wonderful contrast, and can be seen in the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern At, the Library of Congress, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Please note that there is printing on the reverse.
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(This is an original 1931 halftone print of a silversmith ...)
This is an original 1931 halftone print of a silversmith working on a sculptural piece. Photography by Margaret Bourke-White. Bourke-White was born in the Bronx, New York, and her interest in photography was propelled by her father's love of cameras, and her quest for self-improvement. Bourke-White became the first female war correspondent, and the first female photographer for Life magazine. She became the staff photographer and associate editor for Fortune from 1929 to 1935. During World War II, she took images in the combat zones, and was the only foreign photographer in Moscow when the German forces invaded; she was able to capture the ensuing battle. She is known for her images of Gandhi, and Mohammed Ali Jinnah. Her images portray amazing depth, and wonderful contrast, and can be seen in the Brooklyn Museum, the Museum of Modern At, the Library of Congress, and the Cleveland Museum of Art. Please note that there is printing on the reverse.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B005HFRDBW/?tag=2022091-20
(Photo of Flag Making in Brooklyn, New York. PHOTOGRAPHER...)
Photo of Flag Making in Brooklyn, New York. PHOTOGRAPHER / CREDIT: Margaret Bourke-White ABOUT OUR PHOTOGRAPHS If you're looking for the highest quality photo available of this image, then we're confident that you've found it. We actually do things different here, mixing the best of today's print and restoration technologies with old fashioned hard work and artistry. People still make the artistic decisions, not computers. And we print real light exposed and chemical processed prints using Kodak Professional Endura archival photo paper. Since our start online in 2001, we've served more than 30,000 customers with a 99.9% satisfaction rating. What you are buying here is a REAL PHOTOGRAPH! At The McMahan Photo Art Gallery & Archive, you are always buying the best! Each print is given a final inspection before leaving the studio, then is sealed in archival plastic and properly packaged to survive the journey to you. Every order is backed by our 30 Day 100% RAVING FAN GUARANTEE! In the unlikely event that your print is damaged, lost, or if you are not totally thrilled by your new print, you are entitled to your choice of an exchange or a refund. Isn't that how it should be? We really want to make you into one of our raving fans! Robert McMahan Founder, Photographer, Historic Photo Print Expert
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(The catalogue for an exhibition of vintage Bourke-White p...)
The catalogue for an exhibition of vintage Bourke-White prints, reproduced full-sheet with her signature in the corner, from the Jane Corkin Gallery, Toronto, 1988. Nice printing of some unusual images. Photographs by Margaret Bourke-White; introduction by Terence Heath; foreword by Jane Corkin. 60 pages; 31 duo-toned plates; 9.5 x 8.5 inches. Notes on the photos.
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(Few careers with a camera have been as narrated and celeb...)
Few careers with a camera have been as narrated and celebrated as that of Margaret Bourke-White. With legendary fortitude and energy, Bourke-White time and again nailed the assignments she was given with formal brilliance and incisive descriptive power. In this series of images, we feel a relaxing of her precision as she recorded an emblematic struggle between natural force and human ingenuity, between our limitations and the grand devices we create to defy them. In the March 22, 1937 issue of LIFE, a publication just six months old, there was a cover story entitled 'Parachutes.' Margaret Bourke-White s pictures told the story of the Irving Air Chute Company in Buffalo, New York, the world s largest manufacturer of parachutes. The photographic sequence of parachutes being tested by Irving employees in this book did not make the article in 1937, but survive instead as diminutive and precious vintage prints, as art. Their wonder is in their ambiguity, their lack of captions and context, their archetypal address of the questions of human importance, of who is really pulling the strings. Printed in duotone on matt stock, and bound in Japanese saifu, this elegant little book is an important addition to the literature on this extraordinary artist. Introduction by Trudy Wilner Stack.
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(Professional 8.5x11 Glossy Photo. When the British held M...)
Professional 8.5x11 Glossy Photo. When the British held Mohandas Gandhi prisoner at Yeravda prison in Pune, India, from 1932 to 1933, the nationalist leader made his own thread with a charkha, a portable spinning wheel. The practice evolved from a source of personal comfort during captivity into a touchstone of the campaign for independence, with Gandhi encouraging his countrymen to make their own homespun cloth instead of buying British goods. By the time Margaret Bourke-White came to Gandhi's compound for a life article on India's leaders, spinning was so bound up with Gandhi's identity that his secretary, Pyarelal Nayyar, told Bourke-White that she had to learn the craft before photographing the leader. Bourke-White's picture of Gandhi reading the news alongside his charkha never appeared in the article for which it was taken, but less than two years later life featured the photo prominently in a tribute published after Gandhi's assassination. It soon became an indelible image, the slain civil-disobedience crusader with his most potent symbol, and helped solidify the perception of Gandhi outside the subcontinent as a saintly man of peace.
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Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City, New York, United States, on June 14, 1904. She was the daughter of Joseph White (a Jew), and Minnie Bourke (Catholic).
Margaret was a student at Cornell University and graduated from with a Bachelor of Arts degree in 1927. She was awarded Honorary Doctorates of Rutgers University in 1948 and University of Michigan in 1951.
After graduation she opened a studio in Cleveland, where she found the industrial landscape "a photographic paradise." Initially specializing in architectural photography, her prints of the Otis Steel factory came to the attention of TIME magazine publisher Henry Luce, who was planning a new publication devoted to the glamour of business. In the spring of 1929 Bourke-White accepted Luce's offer to become the first staff photographer for FORTUNE magazine, which made its debut in February 1930. Her subjects included the Swift meatpacking company, shoemaking, watches, glass, papermills, orchids, and banks. Excited by the drama of the machine, she made several trips to the Soviet Union and was the first photographer to seriously document its rapid industrial development. She published her work in the book Eyes on Russia (1931).
Bourke-White, working out of a New York City studio in the new Chrysler Building, also handled lucrative advertising accounts. In 1934, in the midst of the Depression, she earned over $35, 000. But a FORTUNE assignment to cover the drought in the Plains states opened her eyes to human suffering and steered her away from advertising work. She began to view photography less as a purely artistic medium and increasingly as a powerful tool for informing the public. In 1936 she collaborated with Erskine Caldwell, author of Tobacco Road, on a photo-essay revealing social conditions in the South. The results of their efforts became her best-known book, You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). In the fall of 1936 Bourke-White joined the staff of LIFE magazine, which popularized the photo-essay. Her picture of the Fort Peck dam in Montana adorned the cover of LIFE's first issue, November 11, 1936.
On one of her first assignments she flew to the Arctic circle. While covering the Louisville flood in 1937 she composed her most famous single photograph, contrasting a line of Black people waiting for emergency relief with an untroubled white family in its car pictured on a billboard with a caption celebrating the American way of life.
In early 1940 Bourke-White worked briefly for the new pictorial newspaper PM, but by October she returned to LIFE as a free lance photographer. With Erskine Caldwell she travelled across the United States and produced the book Say Is This the U. S. A. ? In the spring of 1941 they were the only foreign journalists in the Soviet Union when the Germans invaded Russia.
During World War II Bourke-White served as an accredited war correspondent affiliated with both LIFE and the Air Force. She survived a torpedo attack on a ship she was taking to North Africa and accompanied the bombing mission which destroyed the German airfield of El Aouina near Tunis. She later covered the Italian campaign (recorded in the book They Called It "Purple Heart Valley") and was with General George Patton in spring 1945 when his troops opened the gates of the concentration camp at Buchenwald. Her photos revealed the horrors to the world.
LIFE sent Bourke-White to India in 1946 to cover the story of its independence. Before she was allowed to meet Mahatma Gandhi she was required to learn how to use the spinning wheel. On a second trip to India to witness the creation of Pakistan, Bourke-White was the last journalist to see Gandhi, only a couple of hours before his assassination.
In December of 1949 she went to South Africa for five months where she recorded the cruelty of apartheid. In 1952 she went to Korea, where her pictures focused on family sorrows arising from the war. Bourke-White wrote an autobiography, Portrait of Myself, which was published in 1963 and became a bestseller, but she grew increasingly infirm and isolated in her home in Darien, Connecticut.
Shortly after her return from Korea she first noticed signs of Parkinson's disease, the nerve disorder which she battled for the remaining years of her life. On August 27, 1971, Margaret Bourke-White died at her home in Darien, Connecticut.
Bourke-White was a pioneer in the field of photo-journalism. As a staff photographer for FORTUNE and LIFE magazines, she was the first Western photographer allowed to take photographs of Soviet industry, covered the major political and social issues of the 1930s and 1940s. She photographed the leading political figures of her time: Franklin Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and Mahatma Gandhi. Bourke-White was the first accredited woman war correspondent during World War II and the first woman to accompany a bombing mission.
(The catalogue for an exhibition of vintage Bourke-White p...)
(Few careers with a camera have been as narrated and celeb...)
(This is an original 1930 halftone print of a sailor for t...)
(This is an original 1931 halftone print of a silversmith ...)
(Photo of Flag Making in Brooklyn, New York. PHOTOGRAPHER...)
(Professional 8.5x11 Glossy Photo. When the British held M...)
Margaret left behind a legacy as a determined woman, an innovative visual artist, and a compassionate human observer. She was an adventuresome lady who loved to fly.
Quotes from others about the person
Alfred Eisenstaedt, her friend and colleague, said "one of her strengths was that there was no assignment and no picture that was unimportant to her."
In 1924 Margaret married Everett Chapman, but the couple divorced two years later. From 1939 to 1942 she was married to Erskine Caldwell.
