Margaret Bourke- White /photographer - Research Paper Example

Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) Margaret was a world-renowned World War II photojournalist and was one of the first staff photographers hired by Life magazine in 1936 (Cook, 168). She was the middle child of three of Joseph White (an engineer) and Minnie Bourke. Margaret described her mother, Minnie Bourke-White as a forward thinker and strict in limiting outside influences. Her father, on the other hand, has excitement for modern technology and love for photography that it rubbed off on Margaret.

However, Margaret claimed that she never took a photograph until her father’s death in 1922. Margaret began college at the Columbia University and wanted to specialize in herpetology, study of reptiles. But due to her father’s death, financial problems occur which also lead her to switch universities several times. Margaret moved to the University of Michigan and majored in zoology. She began taking pictures of the yearbook and was offered the position of photography editor; but Margaret refused the offer and went to Purdue University after she met and married Everett Chapman in 1924, an engineering student at the University of Michigan.

They moved to Cleveland where Chapman found a new job while Margaret worked at the Natural History Museum. Two years later, the couple got divorced and Margaret received a bachelor’s degree in biology at Cornell University in 1927. Margaret found work in the field of industrial photography. Her photos of steel furnaces and assembly line gained reputation and appeared in the Fortune Magazine. Fortune made her a part-timer and a freelancer for advertising agencies which had made her earned $50,000/year and become one of the most famous photojournalist in America (Cook, 170).

Margaret’s subject of interest in photography had changed when Fortune sent her to the Dust Bowl states during the Great Depression in 1934. She became interested with people and their social problems after four months of photographing people whose lands dried up and blown away. Margaret was also sent to the Soviet Union to photograph some of the first images Americans had ever seen of Soviet Union. In 1935, she photographed and began documenting public works and projects of President Franklin D.

Roosevelt. Margaret pioneered the photo issue for Life Magazine in 1936 and hit the stands. Margaret teamed up and married novelist Erskine Caldwell on the You Have Seen Their Faces, a book about the tragedy of sharecroppers in the South. But after their marriage in 1939, they got divorced and Margaret never would have married again. During World War II, Margaret has made a history when she was the only Western photojournalist present when Germany invaded the Soviet Union and when she became the first woman photographer ever attached to the U.S. armed forces (Cook, 171).

While sailing on a troop ship heading for North Africa in 1942, the ship got torpedoed and the photos of Margaret of people abandoning the ship were published in the February 1943 edition of Life Magazine. The passion and fearless courage Margaret has for photography is legendary. Among other work of hers are: photos of U.S. troops when they invaded the Italy, photos of the emaciated prisoners of war of General George Patton and Hitler, and the photo of beautiful Europe in ruin after the war which was published in Life.

Margaret traveled 36 countries to tell the world different stories. In 1949, she published Halfway to Freedom, a book with photos of Mohandas K. Gandhi at his spinning wheel and a photo essay depicting the effect of Korean War on one family in 1952. In 1956, Margaret was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease and has received experimental procedure for easing the effect of Parkinson in 1958. Another operation was done in 1961 and made her speech laborious, inspiring her to write and finish her autobiography Portrait of Myself.

On August 21, 1971, Margaret died from complications of Parkinson and immobility due to a fall injury.Work CitedCook, David. Mothers of Influence. Colorado: Cook Communications Ministries, 2005, pp. 168-171.