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McGraw Tower, Cornell University
At Cornell University, Margaret Bourke-White discovered her talent for photography. There she sold pictures of the scenic campus to other students using a secondhand Ica Reflex camera with a broken lens. (Photo citation- http://museum.cornell.edu/exhibitions/margaret-bourke-white-cornell-student-visionary-photojournalist#&gid=1&pid=1) -
Garment District, New York City
Bourke-White specialized in architectural photography after graduation. She photographed the Otis Steel factory which caught the attention of Time magazine publisher Henry Luce. Bourke-White then became the first staff photographer for Fortune magazine, which debuted in February 1930. Her subjects included the Swift meatpacking company, shoemaking, watches, glass, paper mills, orchids, and banks. (Photo citation- http://archive.fortune.com/galleries/2007/fortune/0704/gallery.f500_photos.fortune -
“At the Winches” from Eyes on Russia
While working on assignment for Fortune magazine, Bourke-White was sent to Germany to cover the Krupp Iron Works. She then photographed the first Five-Year Plan in the Soviet Union becoming the first to document their rapid industrial development. She published her work in the book Eyes on Russia. (Photo citation- http://thispublicaddress.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-search.cgi?IncludeBlogs=14,4,3,7,12,15,14&search=Margaret Bourke-White) -
Bourke-White working atop the Chrysler Building, NY 1934, Oscar Graubner
Bourke-White worked in a studio at the Chrysler Building in New York City where she did advertising work. However, when she covered the drought in the Midwest she began to view photography less as a purely artistic medium, like photos she covered in the city, and more as a powerful tool for informing the public. (Photo citation- http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011660317/) (Photo citation- http://www.loc.gov/pictures/item/2011660317/) -
Margaret Bourke-White and Erskine Caldwell
In 1935 Bourke-White met Erskine Caldwell, a novelist, whom she married from 1939 to 1942. The couple collaborated on three illustrated books: You Have Seen Their Faces (1937), about Southern sharecroppers; North of the Danube (1939), about life in Czechoslovakia before the Nazi takeover; and Say, Is This the U.S.A. (1941), about the industrialization of the United States. (Britannica) (Photo citation- http://cache3.asset-cache.net/gc/51255921-american-writer-erskine-caldwell-and-his-wife-getty -
You Have Seen Their Faces
In 1936, Caldwell and Bourke-White created a photo essay on revealing social conditions in the South. The results of their efforts became her best-known book, You Have Seen Their Faces (1937). (Photo citation- http://www.ugapress.org/index.php/books/you_have_seen_their_faces) -
LIFE's first issue
Bourke-White joined the staff of Life magazine, which popularized the photo-essay. Her picture of the Fort Peck dam in Montana was the cover of Life magazine's first issue, November 11, 1936. (Photo citation- http://www.usace.army.mil/About/History/HistoricalVignettes/WomenMinorities/066LIFESfirstcover.aspx) -
Moscow Bombing, July 1941
Margaret Bourke-White was the only foreign photographer in Moscow in 1941. She went up the American embassy roof where the Soviet air wardens couldn’t see her to capture this photo. (Photo citation-http://www.monroegallery.com/photographers/detail/id/9) -
Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945
Bourke-White accompanied General George Patton (1885–1945) in the spring of 1945 when his troops opened the gates at Buchenwald, Germany, a concentration camp. Her photos revealed the horrors to the world. (Photo Citation- http://time.com/3638432/behind-the-picture-the-liberation-of-buchenwald-april-1945/) -
Nuremberg after Allied bombing, Germany, 1945
From 1939-1945, Bourke-White served as the first female war correspondent in World War II. She worked with both Life and the U.S. Air Force. She survived a torpedo attack on a ship she was taking to North Africa and accompanied the bombing mission that destroyed the German airfield of El Aouina near Tunis. (Photo citation- http://time.com/3648583/the-battered-face-of-germany-ruins-of-the-reich-pictured-from-the-air) -
Gandhi, India, 1946
Margaret Bourke-White was in India in 1946 to cover the impending Indian independence. She had the rare photo opportunity to photograph Gandhi using a spinning wheel using only three flashbulbs due to Gandhi’s dislike of bright light. This image became Gandhi’s most enduring representation. (Photo citation- http://www.pbase.com/omoses/image/118045035) -
Gold Miners, Johannesburg, 1950
In December she went to South Africa for five months where she recorded the cruelty of apartheid, the unfair social and political treatment of black people in South Africa. (Photo cittation- https://www.flickr.com/photos/32357038@N08/8298761163) -
Bourke-White travels to Korea
She went to Korea, where her pictures focused on family sorrows arising from war. (Photo citation- http://www.monroegallery.com/photographers/detail/id/9)
