AUGUST 2004

IMAGES OF INDUSTRY: MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE'S EARLY WORKS

The interior of the Otis Steel Mill. A row of women peeling onions in a factory. Long lines or stacks or piles of the elements of industry: gears, tires, aluminum rods, propellers, smokestacks. All of these images can be found in the early photographs of Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971), one of the preeminent chroniclers of the Machine Age. Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1027-1936, on view at The Wolfsonian through October 10, 2004, is devoted to Bourke-White's formative period, a decade in which she developed her aesthetic vision and forged new territory in the field of photojournalism.

This is the first major exhibition devoted to Bourke-White's early years, from 1927 when she graduated from college, to her work as the first photographer for Fortune magazine, to her well-known 1936 photographs of the Fort Peck Dam for the cover and lead story of Life magazine's inaugural issue. More than 140 photographs are on view, many of which have not been seen by the general public since they were originally published, while others have never been reproduced. The exhibition, which is organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C., also features archival materials from the period, including magazines and books in which Bourke-White's image appeared.

Bourke-White was trained in modernist compositional techniques and photographed with an artist's eye, aestheticizing American industry and factories. She romanticized the power of machines through close-ups, dramatic cross-lighting, and unusual perspectives, presenting industrial environments as artful compositions. "Industry, I felt, had evolved an unconscious beauty—often a hidden beauty that was waiting to be discovered. And recorded! That was where I came in," she wrote in her autobiography.

"The works in this exhibition...will bring to light the distinctive eye for modern design and composition that Bourke-White brought to the field of photography," said Stephen Bennett Phillips, curator at The Phillips Collection and organizer of the exhibition.

Bourke-White created her striking images and developed a reputation as one of the country's most prominent photojournalists at a time when the field was heavily male-dominated and not welcoming to women—a situation that was the ideal backdrop for her to succeed in fulfilling her childhood desire to do "all the things that women never do." She became well known not only for the high quality of her work, but for her forceful personality and her willingness to take on new challenges. During the first decade of her career, a time of prolific activity, she set in place many of the hallmarks that would characterize the remainder of her professional life, from her interest in industry to her innovative use of photographic techniques to the artistry of her approach.

In the early years of her career, Bourke-White lived in Cleveland and supported herself through corporate and magazine work and advertising. She began her association with Fortune magazine in 1929 and her dramatic photos were soon integral to the magazine's image. In 1930 Bourke-White moved to New York and then went to Germany to document German industry. On the same trip she traveled to the Soviet Union, which had built more than 1,500 factories in two years. She was determined to capture its rapid industrial growth on film, despite the fact that the Soviet Union had previously not allowed foreigners to photograph industrial sites. "With my enthusiasm for the machine as an object of beauty, I felt the story of a nation trying to industrialize almost overnight was just cut out for me," she said.

In the Soviet Union her work was greatly admired and she was made a guest of the government, with all expenses paid. It was during this and subsequent trips to the Soviet Union, as she grew aware of the poverty of many of the workers, that she began to incorporate human subjects into her work in a more narrative way.

Bourke-White, whose forceful work initially celebrated the graphic power of machinery over the human element, eventually developed a greater interest in the people behind the machines, and began to combine her photography with a growing social conscience. "While it is very important to get a striking picture of a line of smokestacks or a row of dynamos, it is becoming more and more important to reflect the life that goes on behind these photographs," she told Fortune's editor in July 1935. The images on view in the exhibition trace this evolution in her thought and subject matter, culminating with the images of life in the town of New Deal, Montana that appeared in the first issue of Life magazine, where her work was integral to establishing the tone of the publication.

"An innovator in the field, Margaret Bourke-White created compositions that suggest a new way of seeing the design in everyday life," noted Sarah Schleuning, assistant curator at The Wolfsonian. "Her perspective revealed the subject's inherent aesthetic value. The exhibition offers the opportunity for The Wolfsonian to continue its exploration of the powerful role design plays in the modern world. In addition, it provides us with a chance to showcase photography, a medium that is important to The Wolfsonian's period of concentration but that we don't have well-represented in our collection."

The exhibition is accompanied by a 208-page, fully illustrated catalogue written by Stephen Bennett Phillips and published by Rizzoli International Publications, Inc. The catalogue includes an illustrated chronology of Bourke-White's life as well as appendices with selected correspondence and transcripts of radio interviews. The catalogue is available in the museum shop.

Margaret Bourke-White was organized by The Phillips Collection, Washington, D.C. and supported by the Phillips Contemporaries and Trellis Fund. The Wolfsonian exhibition is sponsored in part by the Funding Arts Network.

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