 
|
|
"Adventure is worthwhile in itself."--Amelia Earhart "I want to do it because I want to do it. Women must try to do things as men have tried. When they fail, their failure must be a challenge to others."--Amelia Earhart |
By D.A. Watson
In 1936, spurred on the success of "picture tabloids" in Europe, Henry Luce decided to launch a picture magazine. This magazine, Life, hired Margaret Bourke-White as one of its four original photographers, and the only woman. Bourke-White's photograph of the Fort Peck Dam appeared on Life's first cover.
In 1937, Life published what was to become one of Margaret’s most famous photographs. It showed black victims of a flood in Louisville, Kentucky, standing in a breadline beneath a billboard of smiling white family in a car. The headline on the billboard read: "World's Highest Standard of Living- There's no way like the American Way."
Margaret and Erskine traveled to Czechoslovakia in 1938, and wrote another book together, North of the Danube, on the people of its small villages they visited there.
In 1939, Margaret and Erskine married and bought a home in Darien, Connecticut. They collaborated on another book, Say, Is This the U.S.A., a report on the state of America, which was published in 1941.
In early 1941, Bourke-White returned to Russia for Life to make a comparison between the current Russia and the one that she saw ten years before. She and Caldwell entered Russia though China. On July 22nd, Germany broke the nonaggression pact and invaded Russia. Bourke-White was the only foreign photographer present, and she photographed bombs falling on the Kremlin at night from her hotel balcony. The resulting pictures were a major scoop for Bourke-White and Life.
After the couple returned to the United States, where both had lecture tours booked, they went their separate ways. When America entered the war, Margaret volunteered her services and became a war correspondent. Erskine went to Hollywood. They eventually divorced.
Margaret covered the war in a specially-designed uniform which became the standard wear for decades of female correspondents. On her way to North Africa, when her ship was sunk, Margaret spent almost a day in a crowded lifeboat on a rough see before being rescued by a destroyer. The Hitchcock movie "Lifeboat" was inspired by this incident.
She went on a bombing mission over the Tunis airfield, taking pictures as the bombs hit their German targets. In Italy, she was with the troops in Cassino, where she photographed artillery barrages. Often the only correspondent in a given arena, she took some of the most memorable combat pictures ever printed in Life.
Crossing the German border with Patton and his troops, Bourke-White was one of the first photographers to document the carnage of the death camps. Her The Living Dead of Buchenwald became a classic. "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless, bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, the living skeletons."
The picture was published in Life, on May 7, 1945, some months after the liberation of the camp. In 1989, Time magazine listed it as one of the ten most iconic images of photojournalism because it informed "the world about the true nature of the Holocaust."
After the war, in 1946, she was sent by Life to document the emerging countries of Pakistan and India. She met and photographed Gandhi and traveled with him, taking one of her most famous photographs, Gandhi at His Spinning Wheel. She also photographed the Moslem massacre of the Hindus in Calcutta.
She photographed Mahatma Gandhi many times, and she was the last person to interview him in 1947 before he was assassinated. Candice Bergen played her in the move "Gandhi".
From 1949 to 1953, Margaret returned to Life and photographed many subjects, including life in South Africa under apartheid and the Korean War.
In 1956, Bourke-White discovered she had Parkinson's Disease. In 1958, she underwent an experimental procedure for easing the effects of the disease. When the operation proved successful, Margaret returned to work at Life, but had to cut her activities back to writing only. Her friend and colleague Alfred Eisenstaedt worked with her as photographer, and they did a documentary of the same type of surgery Margaret had undergone for her Parkinsons. Life was eventually persuaded to run the feature, and it proved to be hugely popular.
In 1961, Bourke-White’s disease again reached her right side, and another operation had to be performed. It was successful, but created difficulties with her speech. She began writing, finishing her autobiography, Portrait of Myself.
In 1971, Margaret fell victim to one of the dangers of Parkinson’s – a serious fall – and had to be confined to a hospital bed. Complications soon set in, and Margaret Bourke-White died on August 21st, 1971, at the age of sixty-seven.
Today, her photographs can be found in many museums, including the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art in New York. She is also represented in the collection of the Library of Congress. Among her many tributes were doctorates from the University of Michigan and from Rutgers University in 1950, which she received along with President Dwight Eisenhower.
More quotes by Margaret Bourke-White:
"This is a big wonderful world and people, especially artists, should grow in it because artists show others the world."
"Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you."
Additional Resources:
The Movie "Double Exposure", Starring Farrah Fawcett, Chronicles Her Life.
Lessons in Looking
http://www.efn.org/~sroehr/mbwindex.html
This website focuses on the tremendously large collection of images produced by the American photographer Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71). The lessons included here are meant to introduce the student to basic issues of reading photographs. Highlighted will be Bourke-White's photographs of industry, poverty and war.
|
|
 |
| Women Who Dared II |
 A beautiful and inspirational poster with pictures and short vignettes of "women who dared." |
|
| American Experience: Around the World in 72 Days (1997) |
 PBS Home Video. Many called her "the best reporter in America," and Nellie Bly truly achieved amazing successes. She got herself committed to an institution to expose abuses of the mentally ill and actually did travel around the world in 72 days. Discover the woman behind these and many other astonishing feats -- a serious yet spunky celebrity who mastered life through her cunning and wit. |
|
| The Hawaiian Archipelago |
 By Isabella Bird. Six Months Among the Palm Groves, Coral Reefs and Volcanoes of the Sandwich Islands. |
|
| Women of Discovery |
 A Celebration of Intrepid Women Who Explored the World by Milbry Polk, Mary Tiegreen. Across the centuries and from many lands, women have set forth on journeys of exploration. Visionaries, adventurers, artists, and scientists, these women challenged the limitations, both physical and social, of their times and, in the face of formidable challenges, expanded the world's body of knowledge. Yet despite their extraordinary achievements, they have remained unknown and unsung for too long. |
|
| Amelia Earhart : A Biography |
 By Doris L. Rich. "Rich's portrait reveals a determined, independent woman, brave enough "to go where no one had gone and to do what no one had done" . . . [and] illuminates the public and private life of a legendary flier, bringing her back to earth as a courageous woman who dreamed and dared all." (Christian Science Monitor) |