Margaret Bourke-White Research Paper

Margaret Bourke-White was born in New York City in 1904. She added “Bourke”, which was her mother’s maiden name, to her name after her first marriage ended. In 1921, Margaret enrolled in classes at Columbia University to study art. Her mother bought her an Ica Reflex camera that had a broken lense that year. She used the camera to photograph the campus and sell the images to other students. This was Bourke-White’s first steps to becoming a photographer. Bourke-White’s photographs of the Otis Steel Mills began her career as an industrial photographer. In 1929, she accepted an offer to become the first staff photographer for Fortune magazine, which made its debut the next year. She became the first foreign photographer to have unlimited access …show more content…
This assignment opened her eyes to human suffering and she began to view photography as a powerful tool for informing the public. Her turn to social documentary led her to Erskine Caldwell, the author of Tobacco Road. He wanted a photographer to accompany him on a trip to the South where he was going to write another book. Together they wrote You Have Seen Their Faces, which revealed social conditions in the South and became Bourke-White’s best known book. In the meantime, Life magazine had begun to form and Bourke-White was one of the first photographers to be called. Her assignment was to cover the Public Works Administration dam project in Montana. Her photographs of the dam were on the cover and became the first true photo essay. In 1941, Bourke-White went to the Soviet Union. She was the only photographer in Moscow during the German raid on Kremlin and she was able to photograph Josef Stalin. Bourke-White requested permission to cover the North African campaign and she was sent by ship. The ship was hit by torpedo in the middle of the night and only one of her cameras made it to the lifeboat. After this experience, she went on to a new assignment to fly a bombing raid. One of the photographs that was taken was just before she flew, dressed in flying gear. This photo became one of the army’s favorite pin-up posters. Bourke-White covered almost the entire

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Margaret Bourke-White Research Paper