Distinctly Montana Magazine

W W W. D I S T I N C T LY M O N TA NA . C O M 73 b y BRIAN D'AMBROSIO S HE WAS VIVACIOUS, ARTICULATE, AND, BY VIRTUALLY ALL AC- COUNTS, VERY CHARMING. But most of all, she was fully dedicated to her work and married to her cameras. No assignment was too slight for her. For 40 years, Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) was one of America's best-known photojournalists. Her prudence, instinct, and artistry encapsulate many of the most momen- tous dealings of the 20th century. Bourke- White chronicled the arrival of the American industrial revolution, traveled overseas during WWII on assignment for both LIFE maga- zine and the U.S. Army Air Force, and covered the Korean War; her portraits of Winston Churchill, Joseph Stalin, and George S. Patton put faces to a distant war. Among her classic images is her portrait of Gandhi, for she was the last journalist to interview him. Born June 14, 1904 in New York City, Margaret White was the daughter of an engineer-designer in the printing industry. She be- gan her career in 1927 as an industrial-architectural photographer, and she soon gained standing for original industrial camera work that led publisher Henry Luce to engage her in 1929 as Fortune magazine's first photographer and later as a member of LIFE'S original staff. Fortune endowed Bourke-White's photography with national exposure and gave her a chance to cover a wide variety of industries and to travel more extensively. From 1928 to 1936 Bourke-White's livelihood mostly depended, according to one biographer, on her photographing the procedures and products of a wide variety of industries: "pigs, watches, oil, salt, coal, steel, limestone quarries, natural gas, automobiles, railroads, fish, sweat shops, paper mills, power, and skyscrapers, to name a few." By 1929 her personal gross income was over $20,000. To be on LIFE's first staff, she signed a contract that required her to work exclusively for Time Inc. as of October 1, 1936, at a salary of $12,000 a year, which included two months' leave each year with pay. Bourke-White had been dispatched to the Northwest to take pictures of the multimillion dollar projects of the Columbia River Basin. What the editors expected were "construction pictures;" what the editors received was a human register of American frontier life which, in the words of one of them at least, "was a revelation." Margaret Bourke-White atop the Chrysler Building, c. 1930. Courtesy of American Photography. Credit: Oscar Graubner. Margaret Bourke-White CONTINUED

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