blog#11: media midterm

Jeffrey De La Cruz

Professor Louis A. Lucca

Mass Media/Evolution 120

October 29, 2010

Margaret Bourke-White: Are they really just worth a thousand words?

            Photographs really can have a lot of different of meanings. Some people take them just in

special occasions, others as a hobby. Margaret Bourke-White took them for these reasons and

more. Her passion was second to none, anything and everything was worth a snap of the camera.

Most of her work has been documented on but somehow her images can speak so much more

depending on who you’re asking. Her images have done wonders for future photographers in the

media field for years to come.

Margaret Bourke-White was a very well-known photojournalist who was born on June

14^th 1904 in The Bronx, New York City (Women in history, 2010). She was a mix of four

ethnicities; Polish and Jewish from her father Joseph White’s side. Margaret was Irish and English from her mother Minnie Bourke’s side. Margaret Bourke-White studied at several different universities in order to get her degree in Herpetology, which I now found out is the study of reptiles. The first university Margaret attended was Columbia University. She would then move onto four different universities, the second was the University of Michigan, which was followed by Purdue University which is located in Indiana. Margaret’s last two schools were Western Reserve University in Cleveland, and finally she received her degree in 1927 from Cornell University in New York (Women in history, 2010). When Margaret was a young woman she showed a lot of enthusiasm and passion for photography as a hobby. The few things that Margaret did know was taught to her by her father growing up because he also was a camera enthusiast. When Margaret Bourke-White really decided to get serious about photography her early inspiration was from Arthur Wesley Dow. What Margaret liked most about his photographs was that he focused on two-dimensional rhythm and harmony. Those same techniques which Arthur Wesley Dow used can be seen in a lot of Margaret Bourke-White’s early photographs. When Margaret was living in Cleveland her favorite types of photographs were that of the buildings around the city. Margaret’s interest in them was due to the buildings different forms and shapes (Margaret Bourke-White, 2005).

There were a few significant moments and photographs that gave Margaret Bourke-White her fame. One of these photographs was that of the steel mills owned by the Otis Steel Company. They did something for Margaret that at the time was pretty much unprecedented, they granted her permission to photograph from the inside of the factory. The reason this was so surprising was because since steelmaking was such a big and lucrative business most owners didn’t want to give away any advantages they might have had against the other companies. While Margaret was thankful and enjoyed taking the pictures, she did stumble upon a problem when developing them. The problem she was having was that since the plants were dark you couldn’t see the images clearly like they were intended to be seen. After a few months of different experiments Margaret finally came up with a solution to her problem. Margaret would go on to use flares as lighting along with a new photo paper so that when developed the photographs could be seen correctly (Margaret Bourke-White, 2005). These photographs allowed Margaret to be known and recognized on a bigger platform. She would get a lot of new job offers from various companies to market and photograph things for them. Margaret now shifted her attention of photographs to specific objects or parts of machines. An example of this is in the photograph known as Ford Motor: Open Hearth Mill (1929). This picture shows a silhouetted worker appearing as an insignificant element dwarfed by machinery’s massiveness. Another example is in her Republic Steel: Pouring steel (1929) which shows the intense heat of molten steel (Margaret Bourke-White, 2005). One of her most famous pictures came about when in 1929 the Chrysler Company hired her to photograph its new skyscraper which was under construction in New York City. This job allowed Margaret to shoot the picture of her sitting on top of a metal gargoyle that’s on the outside of the building. The name of the photograph is Gargoyle outside Margaret Bourke-White’s Studio (1930) (Margaret Bourke-White, 2005).

The 1930’s were very interesting for Margaret Bourke-White. This was the decade which I believe gave her the most fame of her life. Henry Luce was the head of Fortune Magazine and he asked Margaret to join his staff. Margaret would travel throughout the United States of America and also to different parts of the world, most notably Europe and the Soviet Union. Margaret’s main tasks during these trips were to document the industrial transformation of wherever she was. Margaret took the media world by storm when she was the first journalist allowed to document the USSR’s progress industrially. Her photograph “USSR: Moscow, Ballet School Dancers.” (1931) shows students doing a machine dance. The photo shows how industrialization has gotten infused into every part of soviet life. Six years later Henry Luce started a new magazine entitled Life. Margaret Bourke-White’s first assignment for Life magazine was to take pictures of the construction of the Fort Peck Dam in New Deal, Montana. Margaret’s photographs were so good that she got the cover shot for the very first issue of Life magazine which was released on November 23^rd 1936. One of my favorite photographs taken by her was done in 1937. It was taken in Louisville, Kentucky. The photograph shows just how ironic America can be. There is a line of colored people waiting to get bread after a major flood had destroyed most of their homes. Now the irony is that in the background you see a billboard of a white family living life worry free. On the billboard is the slogan “There’s no way like the American way.” Margaret Bourke-White would go on to have a total of twenty one Life magazine covers (Margaret Bourke-White, 2005).

Margaret Bourke-White became the only foreign photographer to have footage of Moscow getting bombed during World War II. Margaret’s photographs made the twenty two air raids look like the July fourth fireworks display. One of Margaret’s most exclusive photos was of Joseph Stalin. These photographs were taken on July 31^st, 1941. Margaret Bourke-White wrote about this in her autobiography and said that “His rough pitted face was cold as ice.” Anything Margaret tried to do to get him to smile or laugh wouldn’t work at all. That was until Margaret had a small accident, a few of her flashbulbs fell and started rolling away so she chased after them. After she got them she noticed that this put a bit of a smirk and smile to Stalin’s face. Margaret was quick to take two shots of him like this because he quickly went back to the seriousness. Another photograph that she’s well known for is of the one she took of Mahatma Gandhi. This photograph was taken in March of 1946 for Life magazine. Margaret had to be shown how to spin cotton in order to be allowed to see him. The spinning of cotton was Gandhi’s way of showing resistance to the British. The photograph taken by Margaret shows Mahatma Gandhi reading behind the spokes of his cotton machines spinning wheels. Another major first for Margaret Bourke-White is for being one of the first photojournalists to take pictures of the Buchenwald concentration camp. Margaret was able to get into them because she came in with the US troops who invaded the area. There are a lot of photographs documenting this event but in my own personal opinion I believe the picture of her showing the prisoners being held captive behind barbwires in the concentration camps is most the most powerful. To me it just shows how evil we can be to each other as humans and that no one is safe from discrimination (Wolfe, P. 1999).

Margaret Bourke-White has done plenty in the development of the photojournalism. Some can say it’s her passion and dedication to her craft, which I wouldn’t doubt or question. I have to believe that she has a knack or just plain and simply luck to get the amazing images she has given the world. Her photographs have given us more than words but shown us that anything and everything can and does have a meaning. These meanings can be different to us all so those thousand words are really an infinite amount. This trailblazer has left her stamp on history of all types but most importantly on the media field.

References

Women in History.  Margaret Bourke-White biography. Last Updated: 4/13/2010. Lakewood

Public Library. Retrieved  October 29, 2010, from: http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/bour-mar.htm

-From this website I got Margaret Bourke-White’s basic biography information, like her date of birth and where she attended school.

Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1927-1936. (2005). The Frick

Art & Historical Center-Resource Library. Retrieved October 29, 2010, from: http://www.tfaoi.com/aa/5aa/5aa356.htm

-From this website I got information on when she lived in Cleveland, Ohio and started to get notoriety for her industrialization photographs.

Wolfe, P. (1999). From the Dust Bowl to bombing raids to Stalin and Gandhi, Margaret Bourke-White captured the world on film. Biography. Volume 3 (2), page 60-69. Retrieved October 29,

2010, from: http://web.ebscohost.com.rpa.laguardia.edu:2048/ehost/detail?vid=3&hid=12&sid=8441468b-d5c5-4468-a7fc-631f82d53b59%40sessionmgr13&bdata=JnNpdGU9ZWhvc3QtbGl2ZQ%3d%3d#db=a9h&AN=1479673

-From this website I got information on how Margaret Bourke-White was vital in getting some of the most powerful images from World War II. I also got information about her encounters with Joseph Stalin and Mahatma Gandhi.

blog 10: Gattica

Those words from the essay The Man on the Moon by George J. Annas is definitely true when compared to the movie Gattaca. In the world of Gattaca if you weren’t bred genetically to certain exact specifications you were considered the outsider. While yes you would be able to be without issues or complications thanks in large part to the alterations, this type of person would create a new discrimination. As it was shown in the movie the main character was very well qualified for the position he wanted and was deemed a risk just because he wasn’t altered when he was conceived. The same applied to the holocaust, if you weren’t of the right religion or race you were thought of as the enemy and dangerous. This was the only justification for the mass murdering they did on the Jews. While the newly engineered humans were thought of as perfect they too did have flaws that were showcased in the film. For one the director of the space program was the murderer and according to his DNA he was incapable of committing such a crime. Another example was the man who gave his identity up after he was no longer invincible and got into an accident. This accident we found out later was intentional because he came in second place at a swimming event even thought his DNA code was meant for him to finish in the top spot most of the time. In my personal opinion I don’t think that doing stuff this extreme is good for the human race, while it would be nice to be able to detect and try and get rid of certain diseases so that we could live a better life after birth it’s like you’re playing god and that’s never a good thing. It could work the other way because as you could see in the movie the genetically engineered people were very much envied by the regular humans and that can cause a lot of friction towards them.

blog: 9 eassy # 2

It’s funny how the word hero can mean so many things to different people. Hero was a movie we saw in class which shows this to be very true. Throughout this essay I will show three examples of the different types of heroes portrayed in the movie. The film has a few different moments to justify my viewpoints.    

My first example of hero’s having different meanings to certain people comes in the character of Joey LaPlante. Joey is the son of Bernie LaPlante who is one of the main characters of the film. Now growing up I have yet to meet a kid who hasn’t idolized or aspired to be like one of their parents. I know that for me I wanted to be like my father as a child just for the mere fact that I thought he was “cool”. This is a common feeling for children and it’s shown in the movie by Joey. Now Joey might have wanted to be like his father for all the wrong reasons. That’s because Bernie liked to lie and stretch the truth a lot so that he could appeal to his son. There is a scene right after the plane crashes and Bernie saves all the people were he’s pulling up to his ex-wife’s house to see if he can still talk to his son even though he is really late. As Bernie is walking up to the house Joey is watching and observing him. He notices that he is missing a shoe. He must find this a bit strange because all throughout the film his father is always telling him to keep his shoes clean. A few days pass and right as he’s getting ready to eat dinner a news reports comes on. In the report it shows that the “Hero” that saved all the passengers from that burning plane is missing a shoe. Once this is said Joey starts thinking of that night and has the thought that maybe his father could have been the mystery person. As quick as he thinks of this thought his mother shoots the idea down saying that it’s so unlike his father to stick his neck out and risk his life for someone else other than himself.

Gale Gayley is a character in the film who is a news reporter. She was one of the victims on the plane that crashed. Her character really did play into the fact that in real life the media loves to sensationalize certain people and keep others out of the lime light due to stereo types. Once Gale is rescued she is immediately focused on turning this tragic event into a news story. It isn’t until she is in the hospital when she realizes that no one knows who saved all the people. She starts off by doing a news report from all the victims in the hospital. Once she returns to work the news channel she works for decides to run a huge campaign to find out who the mystery man is. Now once John Bubber comes forward they rush to get an exclusive interview and give him a reward and tons of free gifts. This just goes to show that the media instead of doing their jobs correctly and taking a little bit longer to find the correct person, would rather get an exclusive and boost their ratings in order to please the public. One scene of the movie which I loved was when the police officer was briefing her on her missing purse and telling him how Bernie LaPlante was in custody for stealing it. Now if she would have just taken the time to really think how in the world he could have stolen her purse when it was in a burning plane she would have seen the truth. A second example of Gale being blind and seeing just whatever she wanted to see is when they are reenacting the rescue for a movie they are doing. Now John Bubber has now clue on what to do but Gale is too caught up in believing that he’s the true hero. Even though she is basically walking him through how he rescued her. At one point she even says to him that you seem much taller than you did on the plane.

Now John Bubber may have come across as a jerk or a fake for his act in taking credit for rescuing the passengers off the burning plane, but he did have a few heroic acts in his own right throughout the film. The first sign of him being a hero came when he was leaving the restaurant with gale and was bombarded with all the media coverage. He felt very uncomfortable with this and it was very visible in the film. John was a man who previous to this was down on his luck and living out of his car and on the borderline of being homeless basically. Since he knew the feeling he simply asked the media and everyone who gathered around to bring a blanket to a specific street where there were a lot of homeless people who are very cold at night. Now while he wasn’t the true hero everyone made him out to be, the movie kind of shows that in his own special way he really is. His other heroic act came when he was doing a visit to a children’s hospital. Being in front of the camera always made him feel shy and nervous because inside he knew the truth but there was a kid who was in really critical condition with a coma and they said it was highly unlikely he would pull out of it. John made sure to turn off the cameras so that it was a true moment of compassion with the sick child. The next day it was shown that the kid pulled out of it and he was thanking John Bubber as his hero. This particular scene shows that he was kind of destined to be this hero even though it was due to the fact that he lied in the first place. In the ending when John and Bernie are out on the ledge of the building is when Bernie points this out to him and tells him that if he was in his shoes he wouldn’t have been able to do what he did for that child.

The ending of the film also helps me prove what I have been writing about also. When John and Bernie are both on the ledge of the building is when Gale finally realizes and when Joey can see the truth. The hero was and wasn’t who they thought it was all this time. So I hope that we can see that there is a hero in each and every one of us to a certain degree.

blog # 7

http://www.digitaljournalist.org/issue0301/pcox.html

This article shows how Margaret Bourke-White’s pictures were historical and how she was a social activist as well.

http://www.gallerym.com/artist.cfm?ID=17

In this website their showing Margaret Bourke-White’s famous pictures.

http://www.masters-of-photography.com/B/bourke-white/b-w_articles3.html

This website has part of a book recounting Margaret Bourke-White's experiences as the first photo journalist allowed into the Nazi concentration camps.

http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/MargaretWhite.htm

This website gives explanation into some of Margaret Bourke-White's photographs.

Blog 8 Follow up

The “other” in me has happened at the place where I said earlier irritates me the most, at work. Honestly it happens to everyone. If only a few of the people are working hard and no one else, then at some point your just going to want to relax a bit and not kill yourself. I think it’s a natural thing for people to do especially when they see that the people who are less productive and not as hard working have it easier than everyone else. I was called out by an associate and my manager for just slacking off and not doing my work the day before a big presentation. I wasn’t really upset I kind of took the blame and kept doing my job. I did however find it very amusing that the associate who called me out is one of the laziest workers in the store. It’s very ironic that the day I was “lazy” he was the one actually working the hardest.

Blog 8

Well since I consider myself to be a very hard worker, I would have to consider my “other” as laziness. This is something that I can never see myself as. Ever since I was young both of my parents always told me to give 100% of my effort to anything and everything I’m involved in. With this mindset I have always strived to be the best at everything from school, and even work. One of the few reasons as to why I hate laziness or lazy people is because it always comes back to cause more work for everyone. This is why I don’t really like doing group projects in school, because there always seems to be one person who doesn’t put in their fair share of the work. Laziness at work is the worst in my opinion. Since I work retail we really depend on “team” work. So when someone isn’t doing their job correctly or just slacking off it delays everyone else and keeps us at the job later than we have to which is oh so fun. I have to deal with this on almost a daily basis at work, usually when I’m stuck working with the “other” people I try and get my job done quicker and make sure that I have extra time to help out the other employees. Personally I have no issues with these people, I hang out with them occasionally. Just the mere fact that they are lazy kind of puts us in different groups at work, so we use that to kind of joke around with them. I guess I’m only so upset with this because a lot of people can see that if we all put in our hardest effort we can get results a lot faster in the work place.

Blog 6: Hero

This is the second time that I watch the movie Hero. I really enjoyed it the first time that I viewed it and must say that now that I’m older I still enjoyed it but did get more out of it. It may be due to the fact that I’m able to grasp things that are not easily comprehended or just simply that it’s been too long since I saw it so it wasn’t as fresh in my mind. The movie was great I loved its sense of humor and subtle signs of hero’s. Like it was addressed in class the media does like to sensationalize certain people in order to boost ratings and viewing. A lot of times if someone doesn’t fit the description of a hero they will get brushed to the side because we as a culture are trained into thinking that hero’s have to look a certain way. I did like the fact that after Bernie Laplante saved all those people and made his way to go see his son with his missing shoes no one believed him. The only person that had a slight thought that it could have been him was his son. I think they play into this because as a child a lot of children look up to and think that their fathers or mothers are hero’s. One aspect that was pointed out to me was that the director was British and now I see a lot of symbols of how we use American colors and patriotic music for a lot of things instead of for truly patriotic things.

Blog 5: Plan for media paper

1. My topic/person of choice is Dorothy Day.

2. The importance of this person is that she started a independent newspaper as an outlet for alternative journalism.

3. My position is to show how different forms of journalism is needed in order for everyone to be heard.

4. I'm hoping to find books on Dorothy Day and use some help from online search engines to gather the proper information.


Reason is your justification for something, Evidence is something thats used to prove a point, and Argument is when you have a particular stand for something.

Blog 4: Reflection

In the short time that I have been in this english class I have learned a few things and have caught on to a few things that I thought I knew before. One of the subject matters that have been made clear to me was what a thesis is. I thought a thesis was just a main point to an essay your writing, when in actuality it’s much more. A thesis is where you stand on any particular subject, but can’t be just your opinion. An example we used in class was you can say “I’m against animal testing” that’s just your opinion. An example of a thesis would be “I’m against animal testing because it’s unethical and harmful”. Another subject matter that I was confused on was topic sentences. To me I thought it was basically the same thing as a thesis. As you can clearly see English is not one of my stronger subjects. The topic sentence or sentences are simply used to enforce or support your thesis statement. The prewriting exercise were a plus, I used to do that in high school. I believe my teacher called it free writing. I use it a lot in order to get my ideas flowing about the essay or writing assignment. Since I’m not very good at writing correctly I would have to say that writing a good essay in its correct format is definitely my biggest challenge. I guess it’s just going to have to be something that I practice and work hard at in order to improve.

The interaction with the other English class was cool. I was a bit nervous at first to leave a comment to a total stranger but I was respectful and gave my honest opinion on their work which I hope was useful. It’s a little bit easier responding or commenting on your classmates work because after a while you build a relationship with them and get more comfortable in giving your opinion to them. I don’t believe that critiquing someone else’s work made me more confident in my ability to write a correct summary when I wasn’t sure what a good summary consisted of until we talked about it in class that day.

finally i close out this blog with saying that I hope I pass these classes.