Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White made history as the first female industrial photographer and the first female to be hired as a photojournalist. Her work is very inspiring to me because I also hope to be a photojournalist and travel around the world documenting social, political, and environmental issues in the hopes of bringing awareness to them and precipitate positive change. One of my favorite quotes by White is “We see a great deal of the world. Our obligation is to pass it on to others.” White is also very inspirational because she made it big in a world where the roles of women were very limited. This is due to her incredible persistence and determination.

She also made history as the first female war correspondent permitted to work in combat zones in World War II and actually flew in American bombers. White was a documentary photographer for Fortune magazine and later became a photojournalist for Life magazine, and her photograph appeared on one of its first covers. She also shot the great depression, and was the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union, where she captured the industrial revolution. 

She made history for being the only photographer to capture the bombs that fell on Moscow. She was also one of the first to document the Nazi death camps. She explains that the barrier that her camera created between herself and the horror and tragedy that she witnessed helped her to maintain her inner tranquility throughout her career

Later on, she traveled to Pakistan and India to shoot the violence that erupted during the independence and partition of both countries. She is also famous for photographing Mahatma Gandhi just hours before his assassination. She died of Parkinson’s disease at the age of 67. Her friend and colleague, Alfred Eisenstaded, said that her work was so great because there was no assignment or photograph that was unimportant to her. She wrote six books about her travels, and three books have been written about her. Her work is displayed in the Brooklyn Museum, the Cleveland Museum of Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Library of Congress.