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
14th 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 23rd 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 31st, 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,
-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.
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