Margaret Bourke White: Portrait of Myself

Just finished reading  "Portrait of Myself" the autobiography of Margaret Bourke White. I highly recommend. An amazing woman who became a photographer in the early twenties. Back in the day the profession was a man's world. She pleaded her way into the steel mills of Cincinatti Ohio and through trial and error was able to take some amazing pictures of American Industry at it's finest and most brutal. Within about 10 years she was pretty much a know photographer and in another 10 years she was a household name. She hooked up w/ Erskine Caldwell of Tobacco Road fame and did the photographs for "Have You Seen Their Faces." When Fortune Magazine started she was hired to continue to do her industrial type photographs. She actually had a studio in the Chrysler Building in New York City right near one of the famous gargoyles that adorn the building. The studio had an outside terrace where she kept two pet alligators. Quite a Woman even by today's standards. When Life Magazine was formed in 1936 she was hired as one of the four original photogaphers and one of her photos graced the inital cover of the magazine. She was the first photographer to photograph the Soviet Union during it's five year plan. She photographed Moscow when the Germans were invading. She was a war correspondent during WWII who photographed the North Africa Campaign, Italy and when the U.S. Army swept into Europe she was there to photograph the concentration camps which haunted her for the rest of her life. After the war she went to India to photograph Gandhi. She photographed him many times and was the last one to interview him before he was assasinated in 1948. During the Korean War she photographed Korean Guerillas, a very difficult project due to the primitive conditions. An amazing woman and an amazing book. I highly reccommend.
     Why am I posting this on my photography blog? One of the things that hit me during the reading of this book is that after she was done photographing all day, she didn't go home and chill out the rest of the night. Most nights she was in the darkroom till the wee hours of the morning developing film to deliver product the next day. That's the way it was. I'm pretty quick at editing and getting pictures to my clients, but after reading the book I'm motivated to get home after I'm done w/ a job and get right on the pictures. I'm not saying I"ll be done the next day but I will get right on it in the spirit of Margaret Bourke White.

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