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
Margaret Bourke-White quotes about
Life wanted faces that would express what we wanted to tell. Not just the unusual or striking face, but the face that would speak out the message from the printed page. I am always looking for some typical person or face that will tie the picture essay together in a human way.
"Utter truth is essential, and that is what stirs me when I look through the camera."
Nothing attracts me like a closed door. I cannot let my camera rest until I have pried it open.
Work is something you can count on, a trusted, lifelong friend who never deserts you.
As photographers, we live through things so swiftly. All our experience and training is focused toward snatching off the highlights... That all significant perfect moment, so essential to capture, is often highly perishable. There may be little opportunity to probe deeper.
Photography is a very subtle thing. You must let the camera take you by the hand, as it were, and lead you into your subject.
I'm afraid my closely guarded solitude causes some hurt feelings now and then. But how to explain, without wounding someone, that you want to be wholly in the world you are writing about, that it would take two days to get the visitor's voice out of the house so that you could listen to your own characters again?
If anyone gets in my way when I'm making a picture, I become irrational. I'm never sure what I am going to do, or sometimes even aware of what I do-only that I want that picture.
If you want to photograph a man spinning, give some thought to why he spins. Understanding for a photographer is as important as the equipment he uses.
The camera is a remarkable instrument. Saturate yourself with your subject, and the camera will all but take you by the hand and point the way.
The very secret of life for me, I believed, was to maintain in the midst of rushing events an inner tranquility.
If you banish fear, nothing terribly bad can happen to you.
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.