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.
Bibliography:
Lucinda Barnes, A Collective Vision: Clarence H. White and His Students Margret Bourke-White Anton Bruehl Laura Gilpin Dorthea Lange Paul Outerbridge Ralph Steiner Karl Struss Doris Ulmann, Long Beach: University Art Museum, California State University, 1985.
Erskine Caldwell, You Have Seen Their Faces: Photographs by Margaret Bourke-White, New York: Arno Press, 1975.
Sean Callahan, The Photgraphs of Margaret Bourke-White, Prineville, OR: Bonanza Books, 1972.
Sean Callahan, Margaret Bourke-White: Photographer, New York: Bullfinch Press, 1998.
Rachel Davis Fine Arts, Margaret Bourke-White, Cleveland, OH: Rachel Davis Fine Arts, 1994.
Vicki Goldberg, Bourke-White, Hartford, CT: United Technologies Corporations, 1988.
Terrence Heath, Margaret Bourke-White: Photographs, Toronto: Jane Corkin Gallery, 1988.
Ostman, Littell, Margaret Bourke-White: The Early Works, 1922-1930, Boston: David R. Godine, 2005.
Stephen Bennett Phillips, Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design 1927-1936, New York: The Phillips Collection and Rizzoli, 2002.
Jonathan Silverman, For the World to See: The Life of Margaret Bourke-White, New York: The Viking Press, 1983.
