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"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
"I feel that utter truth is essential,” Bourke-White said of her work, “and to get that truth may take a lot of searching and long hours.” “The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.”
Margaret Bourke-White was the daughter of Minnie Bourke and Joseph White. She was born on June 14, 1904. While she was born in the Bronx, New York City, her family moved to Bound Brook, New Jersey, when she was young.
Her father was an inventor, engineer, and an amateur photographer who introduced her to machines of all types – including the camera. Her mother was considered a very forward thinking woman for the early 1900s.Margaret and her sister Ruth were taught at home by their mother, who was reportedly quite strict at monitoring all outside influences on their life.
Margaret adored her father. If something interested Margaret's father, it also interested her. She was intrigued by his work, and used to help him develop prints in his bathtub. In 1917, her father suffered a stroke. When he recovered somewhat, several years later, he took the family on a trip to Niagara Falls and Canada. It was here that Margaret began to help him set up shots, and took notes on his photographs.
In 1921, Margaret began college – first at Rutgers, then the University of Michigan, then finally to Cornell University, where she graduated in 1927. She had originally planned to study herpetology, but by the time she graduated she had determined to become a photojournalist.
While at the University of Michigan, she began taking pictures for the school yearbook, and was later offered the position of photography editor. She did not follow through with this job, however, choosing instead to marry an engineering graduate student named Everett Chapman. Within two years the couple had divorced, and she moved to Cornell and resumed her interest in photography.
Upon graduation from Cornell she moved to Cleveland, where her family was then residing, and started her career with a portfolio she had compiled while she was in college. She founded the Bourke-White studio in her one room apartment.
She began her career by concentrating on machines and industrial buildings in Cleveland and Detroit, and her portfolio soon brought her to the attention of some of the biggest industrial tycoons. Her successful shoot of the Otis Steel mill brought her enough money to move her studio to the Terminal Tower skyscraper.
In 1929, she was contacted by publisher Henry R. Luce for a possible job at a planned new weekly magazine called Time. That prospect did not appeal to Bourke-White, but another of Luce’s new publications did – Fortune Magazine. She began shooting photo essays for the magazine even before its first issue came out in 1930.
In 1930, Bourke-White wanted to travel to Russia to document the change it was undergoing from an agricultural to an industrial economy. Russia, however, was historically unfriendly to western journalists, especially photographers, and her editors at Fortune did not believe she would be able to enter the country. They sent her to Germany, instead.
Undaunted, she decided to get to Russia on her own, and after many weeks of waiting and red-tape, she was granted a visa. She found that she loved the Russian people, and that they shared her fascination with machinery. For five weeks, she traveled all over Russia, photographing factories, farms, dams, and Russian workers of all types. Taking almost 3,000 negatives of Russia, she composed the first complete documentary of the newly formed Soviet Russia.
She took a second trip into Russia in 1931, following an invitation by the Russian government. Concentrating this time on writing and photographing the people of Russia, Bourke-White had six articles published by the New York Times Sunday Magazine. Her first book, Eyes on Russia, reflects the love she had for the energy and enthusiasm of the Russian worker.
In 1934, Margaret was assigned to cover the drought and its victims in the American Midwest. This caused her to view humanity from a new viewpoint. She had never seen “people caught helpless like this in total tragedy.”
Wanting to combine her pictures with the words of a writer who could portray America as it really was, she toured with Erskine Caldwell – a noted southern writer. They drove an automobile through the South, creating a photo documentary of the poor, rural people of the region. The book she and Caldwell produced in 1936, Have You Seen Their Faces, made publishing history.
(Next: Margaret goes to war)
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