Margaret Bourke-White

Who is the photographer?
Margaret Bourke-White

What is their work about? Or what is a recent body of their work about?
Bourke-White's work was largely documentary. In many ways similar to Lange, she worked during the Dust Bowl and Great Depression. She also became known for being not only the first female but also one of the first people to be allowed to travel with the military. Bourke-White began her career in this line of photography when she was hired, soon after graduating from Cornell, for Life magazine. After that, she went on to travel the world, building relationships with other countries eventually being the only foreign photographer allowed into the Soviet Union to photograph.

How did you find out about their work, where have you seen their work?
Since I began photo, I've been exposed to her images. Her documentations of WWII and the Great Depression can be found as easily as Lange's Migrant Mother in history books.

What is compelling about their work?
Bourke-White had the ability to convey her subject's hardships and dignity, something I've recently been trying to do myself. In some of her work, she could also find irony and humor.

Are they an insider or and outsider to their subject?
Bourke-White was an outsider, a clearly fascinated individual who took advantage of her surroundings and could portray that in her work.

What kind of story does the work tell/ communicate?
Her work communicated struggle and strife as well as the respect she had for them.

-Meryl Manaog