Art Photography Is Not Safe
Written by Daniel Brantley
Carrying a camera and an iron will, Margaret Bourke-White ushered in a new era of photojournalism—one that was fearless, dangerous, and compassionate.
Despite the majority of her work being published in magazines (namely Time, which used her shot for their first cover), Bourke-White’s work is some of the most demanding ever captured on film. To view a Bourke-White piece and walk away unaffected is impossible. To view a Bourke-White photo and want to change the world is no rare occurrence.
In her photographic beginning, Bourke-White focused on the concrete. From factories to grand architectural works, such as the Statue of Liberty, her photographic eye caught the beauty, the daunting size of her subjects, and the humanity in the inanimate. But she always had one eye on the humans who made such works possible, and she eventually faced more daunting tasks than climbing on top of buildings or hanging out of airplanes for photos. With the same daring and determination that got her inside countless life-threatening environments, she documented some of the world’s most sought after individuals and events.
Hours before Mahatma Gandhi’s assassination, Bourke-White captured him sitting with his legs cross near his spinning wheel. Over Gandhi’s left shoulder, sunlight pours through a window, as he looks down unaware of Bourke-White’s presence or his impending murder. Then there was Bourke-White’s time spent documenting the war.
Bourke-White showed inmates and prisoners at the Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. There, death and defiance stared back at Bourke-White, giving her photos an incomprehensible immediacy, gravity, and despair. Gaunt faces stare without expectation or hope, causing Bourke-White to admit thankfulness for the camera that acted as a barrier between her and such depravity.
She was also responsible for capturing some of the happier moments of the war, including a series of shots taken of hard-working women. Like the prisoners at Buchenwald, these photos were unexpected, with women well outside their traditional home roles and instead donning blowtorches and hammers, building machines to help the troops overseas during World War II.
Her willingness to come against danger wasn’t a cheap preoccupation with thrills. She had a strong idea of what was right and wrong and would stop at nothing to display her opinions to anyone willing to look. For those who did look—and still do—there is a great urge to act, to make right those wrongs that she documented and to shake the hands of those do-gooders caught in the act. Unfortunately, her works are decades old, and the political and humanitarian issues she photographed are resolved or at least forgotten. But the knowing viewer doesn’t relax.
Taking Bourke-White’s work at face value, the viewer must consider the current world in which they live. It also forces them to choose to do something to make the world a better place or allow travesty to continue occurring without batting an eye. Until the world welcomes Bourke-White and begins to take responsibility for those in its care, it is doomed to repeat its own wrongs. There will be a second Holocaust, a third world war, an ongoing lack of respect for women.
There will be unrest.
And out of the ashes of unrest will rise a Phoenix who will photograph and exclaim the world’s tragedies. Eventually, when there is no other choice, the world will listen. It will be with one ear only, and there will be heart in their efforts, but no good work will be left undone. Until then, photojournalists will praise Bourke-White, envy her photographic talent, and draw strength from her devotion to the truth, even in the face of danger.
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