Photographer of the week: Margaret Bourke-White

  Photographer of the week: Margaret Bourke-White

.Margaret Bourke-White (June 14, 1904 - August 27, 1971) was an American photographer and documentary photographer.  She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the first female war correspondent, the first woman permitted to work in combat zones. Also she was the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover.

During 1927 through  1928, Bourke-White began photographing  the Otis Steel Mill. She photographed for a period of time, her early work being disastrous. She had difficulty lighting her compositions, and eventually found a solution in magnesium flares originally intended for use in the movie industry. Her extensive shooting at the Otis Steel Mill helped her develop her distinctive style. The flares gave her images dramatic lighting. Itwas the publication of these photograph s that got Bourke-White first noticed .

In 1929, Bourke-White accepted ajob as associate editor and staff photographer of Fortune magazine, a position she held until 1935. In 1930, she became the first Western photographer allowed to take photographs of Soviet industry.

She was hired by Henry Luce as the first female photojournalist  for Life magazine in 1936. Her photograph of the Fort Peck Dam construction appeared on its first cover on November 23, 1936. She held the title of staff photographer until 1940, but returned from 1941 to 1942, and again in 1945, where she stayed through her semi-retirement in 1957 (which ended her photography for the magazine) and her full retirement in 1969.

Her photographs of the construction of the Fort Peck Dam were featured in Life's first issue, dated November 23, 1936, including the cover. This cover photograph became such a favorite that it was the 1930s' representative in the United States Postal Service's Celebrate the Century series of commemorative postage stamps.

During WWII she was attached to the U.S. Army Air Force in North Africa, then to the U.S. Army in Italy and later in Germany. She repeatedly came under fire in Italy in areas of fierce fighting. In the spring of 1945, she traveled with Gen. George S. Patton through Germany.

She arrived at the notorious concentration camp Buchenwald. Later, after the war, she produced a book entitled, "Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly", something that helped her come to grips with the brutality she had witnessed during and after the war.

To many who got in the way of a Bourke-White photograph -and that included not just bureaucrat s and functionaries but professional colleagues like assistants, reporters. and other photographers -she was regarded as imperious, calculating, and insensitive. She had a knack for bei ng at the right place at the right time: she interviewed and photographed Mohandas K. Gandhi just a few hours before his assassination in 1948. She was even able to capture a photo of Joseph Stalin with a slight smirk.

Here is a link to a few more photographs http://www.photographersgallery.com/by_artist.asp?id=224