Names: | | Dates: | 1904, 14 June - 1971, 27 August | Born: | US, NY, New York | Died: | US, CT, Stamford | Active: | US / USSR / Germany | Studied at the Clarence H. White School of Photography. American photographer noted for her industrial shots, often for the magazine ‘Fortune‘ and her work in Germany and Soviet Union in the 1930s. Later she photographed the social impact of the American dustbowl and parts of this work was published in her 1937 book ‘You Have Seen Their Faces‘ (New York) in which she collaborated with the writer, and her husband, Erskine Caldwell.
She photographed for Fortune (1930-1936) and she was the first female photographer for LIFE magazine and worked with them extensively from from 1936 onwards. She also took the photograph of the Fort Peck Dam that was used on the front cover of the first issue of Life on 23 November 1936.
She covered major events including campaigns during the Second World War in Africa, Germany, Italy and Russia; the partition of India and Korea's guerilla war.
The Margaret Bourke-White Papers are archived at Syracuse University Library.Preparing biographies Biography provided by Focal Press Studied photography with Clarence White. First staff photographer for Fortune (1929), specializing in factories and machines. One of the original four staff photographers for LIFE (1933), where she produced the cover for its first 1936 issue, the Fort Peck Dam, Montana. Her photographs were included in Erskine Caldwell’s You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), a gritty document of the Depression in the South. First official World War II woman military photographer, providing coverage from the German attack into Russia (1941) to the liberation of Buchenwald (1945). Continued working for LIFE into the 1950s, documenting the world from India during and after Gandhi to the mines of South Africa. (Author: Robert Hirsch - Independent scholar and writer) Michael Peres (Editor-in-Chief), 2007, Focal Encyclopedia of Photography, 4th edition, (Focal Press) [ISBN-10: 0240807405, ISBN-13: 978-0240807409] (Used with permission)
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Margaret Bourke-White
American, 1904-1971
Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City in 1904. She studied at the Clarence White School of Photography at Columbia University and was a student at several other universities before graduating from Cornell in 1927. From there she worked as a freelance industrial and architectural photographer in Cleveland, Ohio. In 1929 she became the first staff photographer for Fortune magazine and in 1936 her cover photo and photographic essay on Fort Peck Dam were in the first issue of LIFE magazine. Assignments for these two magazines took Bourke-White all around the world and her association with LIFE magazine made her the first official woman photographer for the U.S. armed forces. She covered such world events as World War II action in Europe including images of Nazi concentration camp victims and survivors, India during Gandhi's struggle for independence, the Korean War and the social unrest in South Africa. She wrote a number of books regarding her assignments and illustrated them with her photographs, among them is one she collaborated on with her future husband, Erskine Caldwell, entitled You Have Seen Their Faces which documented the difficult times in the South during the Great Depression. In 1957 she went into semi-retirement due to illness and 2 years later she was diagnosed with Parkinson's disease which she later died from in 1971.
[Contributed by Lee Gallery]
The following books are useful starting points to obtain brief biographies but they are not substitutes for the monographs on individual photographers. |
• Auer, Michele & Michel 1985 Encyclopedie Internationale Des Photographes de 1839 a Nos Jours / Photographers Encylopaedia International 1839 to the present (Hermance, Editions Camera Obscura) 2 volumes [A classic reference work for biographical information on photographers.] • Beaton, Cecil & Buckland, Gail 1975 The Magic Eye: The Genius of Photography from 1839 to the Present Day (Boston and Toronto: Little, Brown & Company) p.182 [Useful short biographies with personal asides and one or more example images.] • Capa, Cornell (ed.) 1984 The International Center of Photography: Encyclopedia of Photography (New York, Crown Publishers, Inc. - A Pound Press Book) p.73-75 • Fernandez, Horacio (ed.) 2000 Fotografía Pública: Photography in Print 1919-1939 (Aldeasa) p.62-63 [This Spanish exhibition catalogue is one of the best sources for illustrations of photomontage and book design for the period between the two World Wars.] • International Center of Photography 1999 Reflections in a Glass Eye: Works from the International Center of Photography Collection (New York: A Bulfinch Press Book) p.209 [Includes a well written short biography on Margaret Bourke-White with example plate(s) earlier in book.] • Lenman, Robin (ed.) 2005 The Oxford Companion to the Photograph (Oxford: Oxford University Press) [Includes a short biography on Margaret Bourke-White.] • Witkin, Lee D. and Barbara London 1979 The Photograph Collector’s Guide (London: Secker and Warburg) p.90-91 [Long out of print but an essential reference work - the good news is that a new edition is in preparation.]
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If there is an analysis of a single photograph or a useful self portrait I will highlight it here. |
Photographic collections are a useful means of examining large numbers of photographs by a single photographer on-line.
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Library of Congress, Washington, USA Approximate number of records: ? Note: A single record may contain more than one photograph. | Click here |
"If anyone gets in my way when I‘m making a picture, I become irrational. I‘m never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do— only that I want that picture." | "Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand." |
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