The Answer to Name That Photographer is…

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
(1904-1971) 

Margaret Bourke-White Portrait 1943Margaret Bourke-White was an extraordinary photographer and a woman of many firsts. Not only was she the first female photojournalist for Life magazine and the first photographer  for Fortune magazine, but she was also the first female war correspondent allowed to work in combat zones during World War II, and also the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union.

Before becoming a photographer, she attended five different universities in pursuit of a degree in Herpatology (the study of reptiles), eventually receiving her degree from Cornell in 1927.

She was born in the Bronx to intense parents, Minnie Bourke and Joseph White, who believed in reading and improving the mind. They did not allow things like comic books or chewing gum. Bourke-White enjoyed photography as a hobby and had a father who supported her interest. She studied with Clarence White, a leader in the pictorial school of photography, before moving to Cleveland, Ohio to launch her career. Her first job was as an industrial photographer at the Otis Steel Mill, which brought her much acclaim.

She married twice, once at a young age, then again to writer, Erskine Caldwell, whom she collaborated with on several book projects, including You Have Seen Their Faces, documenting the depression.

Margaret Bourke-White Photo

“Utter truth is essential and that is what stirs me when I look through the camera”–Margaret Bourke-White

Bourke-White photographed everything from apartheid and the horrible working conditions in South Africa’s gold and diamond minds to Nazi death camps to the U.S. fight against Communism in Korea. Her work in the Soviet Union was ground-breaking, and her images of America were dizzying.
Margaret Bourke-White Louiseville
Margaret Bourke-White cameraMargaret Bourke-White
“The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.”–MBW

Margaret Bourke-White Camera Queen

Margaret Bourke-White clearly made a huge mark on photography, and proved that women are just as capable as men, even in the most difficult situations.

To see additional photos by Margaret Bourke-White, click on the highlighted link. You can also check out her work on Amazon (click on this book to get started).

Here’s a list of some of the books she created:
You Have Seen Their Faces, 1937 with Erskine Caldwell
North of the Danube, 1939 with Erskine Caldwell
Shooting the Russian War, 1942
They Called it “Purple Heart Valley”, 1944
Halfway to Freedom; a report on the new India, 1949
Portrait of Myself, 1963
Dear Fatherland, rest quietly, 1946
The Taste of War (selections from her writings edited by Jonathon Silverman

FYI: I just read that Barbara Streisand is hoping to direct her first movie in 16 years–”Skinny and Cat,” a love story about Margaret Bourke-White and her late husband, writer Erskine Caldwell. You can read about it here.

The Answer to Name that Photographer is…

DOROTHEA LANGE

She has been called America’s greatest documentary photographer.

Photo of Dorothea Lange in 1938 with 4x5 camera

Photo of Dorothea Lange

This photo of Dorothea Lange was taken by Rondal Partridge, son of Imogen Cunningham. She is holding a Graflex 4×5 single lens reflex camera, which takes sheet film.

After being educated in photography at Columbia University in New York City, Lange moved to San Francisco and opened a successful portrait studio.

She married, had two sons, then once the Great Depression hit, she turned her lens from the studio to the streets. Her images of unemployed and homeless people captured the attention of many and led her to work for the Farm Security Administration.

In 1935 she divorced her first husband and married her second, Paul Taylor, a professor of Economics at UC Berkeley. Both were passionate about social and political issues and worked together documenting rural poverty and the exploitation of sharecroppers and migrant workers.

Dorothea Lange's photo of a Migrant motherLange’s best known photograph titled, “Migrant Mother, 1936″ captures this thirty-two year old mother whom she described as “desperate and hungry.” She recounted her conversation in a 1960 magazine article: “…She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields, and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food. There she sat in that lean-to tent with her children huddled around her, and seemed to know that my pictures might help her, and so she helped me. There was a sort of equality about it.”

In 1941 Lange won a Guggenheim Fellowship for excellence in photography, but when Pearl Harbor was attacked she gave up this prestigious award to photograph the forced relocation of Japanese Americans to internment camps like Manzanar. Her powerful photographs were so clearly critical of the government’s policy that the Army impounded them.

Dorothea Lange's photo of Japanese Internment

Dorothea Lange photo of a Japanese internment camp

Impounded: Dorothea Lange and the Censored Images of the Japanese American Internment– a book with about 100 never before published photos from her 800 picture archive, is available on Amazon, as are many other classics with her images.

Dorothea Lange Impounded Book CoverDorothea Lange_Heart Mind Book CoverDorothea Lange A Visual Life Book Cover

Check out some of Dorothea Lange’s work if you can, and see the raw emotion she captures in the human condition. There’s a reason she has been described as American’s best documentary photographer.