Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-White
Margaret Bourke-Whitewas an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the firsthand American female war photojournalist, and the first female photographer for Henry Luce's Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover. She died of Parkinson's disease about eighteen years after she developed her first symptoms...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionPhotographer
Date of Birth14 June 1904
CityBronx, NY
CountryUnited States of America
I was to discover that the quest for human understanding is a lifetime one that has no end in sight.
The element of discovery is very important. I don't repeat myself well. I want and need that stimulus of walking forward from one new world to another. There is something demoralizing about going back to a place to retake pictures. You can no longer see your subjects in a fresh eye; you keep comparing them with the pictures you hold in your memory. [The] world was full of discoveries waiting to be made...(as a photographer) I could share the things I saw and learned...you would react to something all others might walk by.
By some special graciousness of fate I am deposited - as all good photographers like to be - in the right place at the right time. Go into it as young as possible. Bring all the asset you have and play to win.
War makes its own morals.
My idea of gardening is to discover something wild in my wood and weed around it with the utmost care until it has a chance to grow and spread.
The very secret of life for mewas to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquility. I had picked a life that dealt with excitement, tragedy, mass calamities, human triumphs and suffering. To throw my whole self into recording and attempting to understand these things, I needed an inner serenity as a kind of balance.
Life is beating against the school windows. You must quickly open the doors and go out to learn that no door must be locked against you.
I like to hide my camera and use a remote control, because then no one knows when I'm actually imprisoning their souls in the visual plane of thought or just sitting there, waiting, and then making time stop. The printed film is like a bell used to symbolize its hour. Except it stands for both that hour's and everything's sudden stopping.
Even while you're in dead earnest about your work, you must approach it with a feeling of freedom and joy; you must be loose-jointed, like a relaxed athlete.
I have never forgotten a picture that I ever made.
Work to me is a sacred thing.
I have always thought that if I could turn back the pages of history and photograph one man, my choice would be Moses.
A kind of golden hour one remembers for a life time... Everything was touched with magic.
Saturate yourself with your subject and the camera will all but take you by the hand.