Margaret Bourke-White, younger than Hine, began the artistic part of her career photographing another New York City monumental building, the Chrysler building. In some ways one could say she worked in reverse from Hine. She started by photographing and paying homage to the great buildings of industry that surrounded her and then went on to use her camera for social change.
Her photograph,
Chrysler building gargoyle
, (www. editorial. Gettyimages.com) taken in 1930, shows the height and magnificence of the Chrysler building. Like Hine's photographs of the Empire State Building, she, too, is paying homage to the building's magnificence and beauty. The steel gargoyle, with the face of an eagle, looks out over the rest of the city as if to proclaim its dominance. Bourke-White is clearly paying tribute to the building, a building in which she could afford to maintain an office on the 61st floor. In order to capture this image she also had to take enormous risks that involved great heights. A common theme among great photojournalists is bravery and the ability to take risks.
Bourke-White was born in the Bronx in 1904. Her father was a civil engineer whose hobby was photography, and her mother worked in publishing. Bourke-White was a child of educated people who had huge expectations for her. All of this would prove advantageous to her ability to make her mark on the world.
Margaret Bourke-White graduated from Cornell in 1929. In 1930 she was the first western photographer allowed in the Soviet Union. She was the first photographer to join
Life
. Her photograph
Fort Peck Dam, Montana
, (www. editorial. Gettyimages.com) appeared on
Life Magazine's
first cover in 1936. In her career she would continue to be first at many things.
This photograph of the dam shows the massive cement structure of the foundation supports. It is taken horizontally and from an angle so that the viewer can see there are immense rows of these support beams. Their immensity mirrors the Egyptian pyramids. To show their immensity she has placed two figures in the forefront. They look like two ants compared to the dam. The photo clearly glorifies the dam and the ability of mankind to harness nature for our needs. At that time she is quoted as saying that "the purpose of art is to find beauty in the big things of the age. Today that big thing is industry." However, working for
Life Magazine
changed everything for her. In addition to changing her style of photography she left the grandeur of the industrial life and started to focus on social conditions and people.
In 1937 she traveled to the Deep South and documented the living conditions of poor tenant farmers. It was that same year that she published one of her most famous and perhaps her most powerful photographs:
Bread Line during the Louisville flood, Kentucky, 1937
(www.masters-of-photography.com/bourke-white)
.
This picture,
taken from the side, depicts about twelve black people, men and women. They are standing in a bread line after the flood. They are clearly exhausted and hungry. Some are facing forward and some are looking ahead to see when they will be able to get food. Behind them is a billboard that shows a white family, smiling in their new car, with the caption, "there's no way like the American Way." It is the irony that makes this picture great. Although Bourke-White came from money and was white she was clearly bothered by the fact that the American way or if you will, the American dream, does not exist for black people. It also shows her growth as an artist and her deeply felt understanding of the unfairness or life and the inherent racism in America.
Bourke-White continued to be first at many other things. She was also the first woman allowed to be a war correspondent for the Army and the first woman to cross the German border with Patton. Because she was with Patton's third army when they reached Buchenwald, she became one of the first photographers to enter the death camps in Germany. Her photographs from that visit,
the living dead of Buchenwald
(www.uiowa.edu/policult/political photos/holocaust2.html) are shocking which is what they were meant to do. One photograph shows the prisoners behind barbed wire waiting to be released. The men in front are clinging to the wire. They are all dressed in prison stripes and have gaunt expressions on their faces. They appear helpless and scared, but there is slight look of hope as their picture is being taken and the American army has arrived.
The other photo is of civilians from the town. Patton was so outraged he made them come over and look at what their leaders had done. They are walking around in suits, clearly not looking at a pile of dead, emaciated bodies heaped on top of each other. They are so emaciated they are practically skeletons. One woman in the photo is shielding her
eyes from the horror around her. The other people in the photo are U.S. soldiers walking around in disbelief. Bourke-White said of this experience, "I saw and photographed the piles of naked, lifeless bodies, the human skeletons in furnaces, and the living skeletons that would die the next day and have their tattooed skin for lampshades. Using the camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me." Not only did these photos of Buchenwald make multitudes of people aware of the atrocity, they also changed
Life Magazine's
policy of not using pictures that would upset people. In fact
Life Magazine
after publishing them said, "Dead men will have indeed died in vain if live men refuse to look at them." Margaret Bourke --White was one of the most famous and successful photographers of her time.