Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White

Photographer, journalist, writer, and social activist, Margaret Bourke-White was a woman of many firsts: first female photographer for Life magazine, first female war correspondent, first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union. The tough-minded and talented Bourke-White was driven by more than mere ambition. She had a deep-rooted belief in an artist’s duty to change the world.

Bourke-White was born on June 14th, 1904, in the Bronx, New York. Her mother, Minnie Bourke-White, worked in publishing. Her father, Joseph White, was an inventor, engineer and avid amateur photographer. The Bourke-White’s home was filled with photographs and Margaret grew up helping her father set up shots and develop photos in the family bathtub.

In 1922 Bourke-White started college at Columbia University but switched schools several times. While at the University of Michigan, she was offered the position of photography editor for the yearbook but turned it down to marry a graduate student, Everett Chapman. When the couple divorced two years later, she returned to school, this time at Cornell University, and graduated in 1927.

After graduation, Bourke-White moved to Cleveland and opened a photography studio. She also landed a job as an industrial photographer for the Otis Steel Company. Her dramatic photos of fiery cauldrons and showers of sparks caught the attention of well-known publisher Henry Luce (Time, Life, Fortune), and in 1929, she was hired as the first photographer for Fortune magazine.

In 1930 Bourke-White gained admittance to the Soviet Union, becoming the first Western photographer to do so. She spent five weeks traveling the country, capturing shots of farms, factories and their workers. In 1931 she published the photos in her book, Eyes on Russia. In the mid-thirties she photographed victims of the Dust Bowl (a drought that devastated the American mid-west), and in 1936, she joined Henry Luce’s newest magazine, Life. Her dramatic black and white photo of Fort Peck Dam graced Life’s first cover.

In 1936 Bourke-White traveled poverty-stricken areas of the American South with writer Erskine Caldwell (God’s Little Acre, Tobacco Road), and together they published the book, You Have Seen Their Faces. While their work received wide acclaim, it also received harsh criticism for its left-wing leanings and passionate attacks on racism. Bourke-White made no apologies for her opinions and even joined several leftist organizations during this period. She also subscribed to The Daily Worker. “Margaret Bourke-White’s social awareness,” said Carl Myandas of Life magazine, “was clear and obvious. All the editors at the magazine were aware of her commitment to social causes.”

In 1939 Bourke-White married Erskine Caldwell and together they published two more books: North of the Danube, which chronicled life in Czechoslovakia before the Nazi invasion, and Say, Is This the USA?, which depicted American life pre-World War II. But while their professional union met with success, their marriage lasted only three years.

In 1941, as World War II was raging in Europe, Bourke-White returned to Russia. She was in Moscow when the first German bombs fell on the city. It was a major scoop, and she spent the next four years as a war correspondent – the first female war correspondent ever accredited by the army. On the front lines in North Africa and Italy, Bourke-White faced terrors and saw horrors she’d never dreamed of. When she entered Buchenwald Concentration Camp with Patton’s troops, the atrocities were almost too much to bear. Asked later how she coped, Bourke-White said, “The very secret of life was to maintain, in the midst of rushing events, an inner tranquility. I had picked a life that dealt with excitement, tragedy, mass calamities, human triumphs and suffering. To throw my whole self into recording these things … I needed an inner serenity as a kind of balance.”

When WWII ended, Bourke-White returned her focus to humanitarian issues, covering Mohandas K. Gandhi’s nonviolent struggle in India and documenting life in South Africa under apartheid.

She took what she considered to be the most important photograph of her career during the Korean War. It showed the reunion of a South Korean soldier and his mother who thought he’d been killed in action.

In 1956 Bourke-White discovered that she had Parkinson’s Disease. True to her nature, she fought back, undergoing an experimental procedure to ease the disease’s effects. She then put together a piece on the surgery. While Life was initially hesitant to publish the story, it proved to be enormously popular and helpful to many Parkinson’s sufferers. Bourke-White then set to work on her autobiography, Portrait of Myself, which was published in 1963.

In 1971 Bourke-White suffered a fall related to her disease. She was confined to a hospital bed and never recovered. She died on August 21st at the age of sixty-seven. In remembering his friend, artist John Vassos said, “I’ve never known a human being that had such a beautiful spirit. Like somebody with their arms open coming to you. There will never be another one like that again.”