Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971), a fearless photojournalist, is this week’s pick for Women Journalists Wednesday. She was known to her colleagues as “Maggie the Indestructible.”
She was the first American female war photojournalist, the first foreign photographer allowed to take pictures of Soviet industry and the first female photographer for Life magazine (her photograph was on the first cover!).
Margaret credited her parents for her perfectionism and her “unapologetic desire for self-improvement.” She transferred college six times, ultimately graduating from Cornell University in 1927. After graduation, Margaret opened a commercial photography studio in Cleveland, Ohio, where she focused on architectural and industrial photography. Later, she was a photographer for Fortune magazine and Life magazine, where she documented the Dust Bowl, the Great Depression, Europe under Nazism and even Joseph Stalin with a smile.
Margaret was the first woman allowed to work in combat zones during World War II. She traveled throughout the Soviet Union and Germany, documenting the horrors of war, including concentration camps. Later, she was known as “one of the most effective chroniclers” of the violence during the independence and partition of India and Pakistan. She interviewed and photographed Gandhi just a few hours before his assassination.
Margaret was a bit of a polarizing figure. Her colleagues said she was manipulative, crying on demand to get a picture, or ruthless and controlling, ordering refugees to pose for hours. She had affairs with married men.
Still, her career was groundbreaking. She was a trailblazer for female photographers, and at the time, many male photojournalists were jealous of her.
Oh and her hyphenated last name? Not her husband’s. Margaret White divorced after two years of marriage. After the divorce, she added her mother’s surname, Bourke, to her name.
In 1953, Margaret was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. She died in 1971 at age 67, only able to blink. Her Life colleague, Sean Callahan, later wrote: “Fittingly for the heroic, larger than life Margaret Bourke-White, the eyes were the last to go.”
Quotes from Margaret:
- “If anyone gets in my way when I’m making a picture, I become irrational. i’m never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do — only that I want that picture.”
- “Nothing attracts me like a closed door. I cannot let my camera rest until I have pried it open.”
- “Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you.”
Read more:
- She was above self-reproach. (New York Times book review, 1986)
- Margaret Bourke-White: A Biography (by Vicki Goldberg, 1986)
- A life less ordinary. (Smithsonian Mag, 2007)
