Margaret Bourke-White
There was nowhere Margaret wouldn't go for a photograph. She would snowshoe to logging camps, hang out of helicopters, and clamber up construction-site girders to capture an image she knew was right. If the action was at the front lines or across the globe, she made sure she was there, camera in hand. With amazing daring and talent, Margaret Bourke-White captured four decades on film, and helped shape the way we saw them.
Margaret gained early attention in New York City as the "little girl photographer" who balanced on a gargoyle outside her upper-floor studio in the Chrysler Building (then the tallest building in the world) in order to get a perfect shot. She was among the first Fortune and Life magazine photographers, and her rendering of the Fort Peck Dam graced the cover of Life's first issue.
In the mid-1930s, Margaret shifted her focus to human subjects. She spent months traveling with writer Erskine Caldwell, who later became her husband. Together they documented the lives of drought victims in America's Dust Bowl, impoverished sharecroppers in the South, and life in Czechoslovakia before the Nazi invasion.
When World War II broke out, Margaret headed for where the action was. She survived a torpedo attack on her way to North Africa, becoming the first woman photographer to see action in North Africa and Italy. She was the first accredited female war photographer and the first woman to fly a combat mission. Margaret documented the daily struggles of infantrymen and later covered the siege of Moscow. She died in 1971 having produced some of the most important photographs of the twentieth century.
Excerpted from the book Cool Women with permission of publisher, Girl Press.
Learn More About Margaret Bourke-White
Bourke-White at Life Magazine
http://www.filmpicker.com/The%20Great%20Photographers/White.htm
Descriptions of her work and her images, primarily during her time with Life magazine.
Margaret Bourke-White Seminars
http://www.photo-seminars.com/Fame/MargaretWhite.htm
Information and images of her photographs and how they captured an era.
Biography of Margaret Bourke-White
http://www.lkwdpl.org/wihohio/bour-mar.htm
Read more about Margaret Bourke-White's life and photography career in this biography.
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