Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand. - Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White, American photographer, best known for her contributions to photojournalism and as the “mother of Life Magazine.” Bourke-White was born in New York City on June 14, 1904, was married and divorced by the age of 26 and pursued photography as a hobby while attending Cornell University. After graduating in 1927, she opened her first studio in Cleveland, Ohio, and focused her photography on industrialism, featuring the interiors of steel mills and factories. Henry Luce, Fortune magazine publisher, admired Bourke-White’s work and hired in 1929. That same year, she was sent to the Soviet Union to photograph Soviet industries.
Making her way through a male-dominant field, Bourke-White made a name for herself in the world of photojournalism with photographs that included events like Dust Bowl in 1934, which depicted the “drought-stricken Southern Plain regions of the United States.” She was also the only western photographer to capture the German invasion of Moscow in 1941. Other notable feats during her career include being the first woman to accompany the Air Corps on bombings in 1942 and traveling with Patton’s army as they liberated concentration camps across Germany after WWII. Bourke-White also interviewed and photographed Mohandas Gandhi several hours before his assassination. In 1957, Bourke-White contracted Parkinson’s disease and put together her final photography essay for Life magazine called “Megalopolis”- showing how certain U.S. cities and suburban satellites blend to form “new shapeless and vast civic units.” She did on August 27, 1971, and is known today as one of the foremost photographers of the 20th century.
https://www.gallerym.com/pages/margaret-bourke-white-biography
https://www.britannica.com/biography/Margaret-Bourke-White
https://www.icp.org/browse/archive/constituents/margaret-bourke-white?all/all/all/all/0