A WOMAN'S BRIDGE
  • Home
  • Who We Are and What We Do
  • Women, Culture & History
  • Literature, Fashion & Film
  • Variety
  • Donate to Women's Services
  • Events

Margaret Bourke-White (1904~1971)

8/9/2010

 
Picture
by Yoon Joung Lee

Margaret Bourke-White, the first foreign photographer who took pictures of Soviet society and the first female war correspondent, was born in 1904, in the Bronx, New York.  Her father, Joseph White, was a Polish-Jewish inventor and an engineer. Her loving and caring mother, Minnie Bourke was an Irish-English woman.  In the early years of her life, Bourke-White along with her two siblings was educated by their mother who strived to raise her kids in a very protective environment, away from such artificial products as junk foods and tabloid papers.

Despite her interest in photography, Bourke-White began to study herpetology at Columbia University in 1922 and did not develop her interest in photography at the time.  Later at Cornell University, she met Clarence White who then was leading the pictorial school of photography at Cornell University and was able to study photography under him.  While she was in Cornell, she had married an engineering graduate student named Everett Chapman in 1924, but they ended up divorcing after two years of the marriage.  Upon her graduation from Cornell University in 1927, she decided to move to Cleveland, Ohio to open her own photography studio specializing in architectural and industrial photography.

In 1929, she took the position as an associate editor and a staff photographer at the new Fortune magazine.  While with Fortune, she had visited the Soviet Union several times as the first permitted photographer to take photographs of the Soviet Industry and also published Eyes on Russia in 1931.  She had held the position until 1935.
In 1936, she got an offer from Henry Luce at Life magazine and became the first female photojournalist.  Her photograph of the Fort Peck Dam was on the cover page of the first edition of Life magazine.  During the mid-1930s, she had toured around South America with a novelist, Erskine Caldwell and had taken pictures for their book “You Have Seen Their Faces” that documented the reality of poor tenant farmers’ living conditions.  The book was published in 1937.

In 1939, Bourke-White remarried Caldwell.  When the German Army attacked the Soviet Union in 1941, the couple were the only foreign journalists at that time.  They had sent a series of spectacular photographs of combat zones to Life magazine.  They returned to the States in 1942 and published the book “Say, Is This the U.S.A.” portraying the life in the U.S. right before World War II.  However, shortly after returning home in 1942, the couple divorced.

After their split, she became the first female war correspondent working for the U.S. Army Air Force in North Africa, working for the U.S. Army in Italy, and later working in Germany during the World War II.  She was also one of the first photographers to be allowed to enter and take pictures of death camps.

In 1946 after the war, she was sent to Pakistan and India by Life to cover the emerging of these countries.  There, Bourke-White became renowned in both India and Pakistan by her photographs of Mahatma Gandhi, especially by one of her most famous photographs, Gandhi at His Spinning Wheel.  Her last photograph of Gandhi was taken only a few hours before he was assassinated.

From 1949 to 1956, she had photographed in South Africa and the Korean War.  In 1949, she stayed in South Africa for five months to record the brutality of apartheid.  In 1952, she went to Korea to photograph the family sorrows and tragedies that happened during the war.  Shortly after returning home from Korea in 1956, she found out that she had Parkinson’s Disease.  In 1958, she received the first operation for easing the effects of Parkinson’s and it was successfully done.  Although her condition restrained her from working for Life magazine as a photographer, she continued to work as a writer.  Along with Alfred Eisenstaedt,  Bourke-White’s friend and also a photographer, she covered her own story of surgery she had undergone in Life magazine and the story became very famous.

In 1961, she had to receive the second operations because of the reappearance of the Parkinson’s symptoms.  Although the surgery was successfully operated, it brought her a speech difficulty.  During this time, she started to write her autobiography “Portrait of Myself,” and was able to complete it before she died in 1971 by a complication caused by Parkinson’s.

Margaret Bourke-White’s contribution to the field of Photography is unspeakably huge.  Being in various battlefields around the world and taking photographs in dangers are difficult even for men.  As a woman, her life was full of adventure.  However, she successfully completed her work and became one of the most important photographers of the twentieth century.

    Archives

    July 2017
    June 2017
    May 2017
    April 2017
    March 2017
    February 2017
    January 2017
    November 2016
    October 2016
    September 2016
    August 2016
    June 2016
    May 2016
    April 2016
    March 2016
    February 2016
    January 2016
    December 2015
    November 2015
    October 2015
    September 2015
    August 2015
    July 2015
    June 2015
    May 2015
    April 2015
    February 2015
    January 2015
    December 2014
    October 2014
    September 2014
    August 2014
    July 2014
    May 2014
    April 2014
    March 2014
    February 2014
    September 2013
    July 2013
    June 2013
    May 2013
    April 2013
    March 2013
    February 2013
    January 2013
    December 2012
    November 2012
    October 2012
    September 2012
    August 2012
    July 2012
    June 2012
    May 2012
    April 2012
    March 2012
    February 2012
    January 2012
    December 2011
    November 2011
    October 2011
    September 2011
    August 2011
    July 2011
    June 2011
    May 2011
    April 2011
    March 2011
    February 2011
    January 2011
    December 2010
    November 2010
    October 2010
    September 2010
    August 2010
    July 2010
    June 2010

    Categories

    All
    Amelia Earhart
    American South
    Amy Beach
    Anna Nzinga
    Anna Sewell
    Anna Wintour
    Anne Bronte
    Barbra Steisand
    Baroness Blixen
    Benazir Bhutto
    Billie Jean King
    Blackfeet Nation
    Brigitte Bardot
    Bronte Sisters
    Catherine The Great
    Charlotte Bronte
    Cheng I Sao
    Civil Rights Movement
    Clara Barton
    Cleopatra
    Cristina Fernandes De Kirchner
    Dagmar Wilson
    Dido Belle
    Dilma Rousseff
    Dorothy Kamenshek
    Edith Wharton
    Eleanor Of Aquitaine
    Elouise Cobell
    Emily Bronte
    Fannie Flagg
    Frances Glessner Lee
    Frida Kahlo
    Gabby Douglas
    Geun Hye Park
    Gone With The Wind
    Hannah Snell
    Harper Lee
    Harriet Tubman
    Hatshepsut
    Heian Period
    Helen Keller
    Hillary Rodham Clinton
    Ho Ching
    Hypatia Of Alexandria
    Intro
    Irena Sendler
    Isabelle Scott
    Jamestown
    Jane Eyre
    Jane Goodall
    Jaqueline Kennedy Onassis
    Jody Williams
    Josephine Baker
    Journalism
    Joy Ogwu
    Julia Ward Howe
    Laurie Marker
    Madeleine Korbel Albright
    Margaret Bourke-White
    Margaret Mitchell
    Margaret Thatcher
    Margot Wallstrom
    Maria Otero
    Marilyn Monroe
    Marjorie Kinnan Rawlings
    Mary Poppins
    Maya Angelou
    Meip Gies
    Meryl Streep
    Mother Theresa
    Murasaki Shikibu
    Nellie Bly
    Patricia Cloherty
    Pl Travers
    Pocahontas
    Rachel Carson
    Rosalind Franklin
    Rosa Parks
    Rosemary Kennedy
    Ruth Harkness
    Sally Ride
    Sheila Johnson
    Song Qingling
    Sophie Scholl
    Sylvia Plath
    The Shriver Report
    To Kill A Mockingbird
    Trudy Harsh
    Vera Wang
    Victorian Era
    Women Journalists In Pakistan
    WWII
    Yearling

    RSS Feed

  • Home
  • Who We Are and What We Do
  • Women, Culture & History
  • Literature, Fashion & Film
  • Variety
  • Donate to Women's Services
  • Events