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BOURKE-WHITE, MARGARET (1904-1971) Otis Steel Mill.
BOURKE-WHITE, MARGARET (1904-1971)
Otis Steel Mill. Silver print, 12 1/2x9 1/2 inches (31.7x23.7 cm.), with Bourke-White''s signature, in pencil, on mount recto. 1927-1929
Otis Steel Mill. Silver print, 12 1/2x9 1/2 inches (31.7x23.7 cm.), with Bourke-White''s signature, in pencil, on mount recto. 1927-1929
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Notes: The Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White, 32 (variant).
As a young child, Bourke-White''s father took her to the steel foundry that was forging his printing presses. She recounted in her 1963 autobiography, "To me at that age, a foundry represented the beginning and end of all beauty…[it] was so vivid and alive that it shaped the whole course of my career."
In 1927, after a sporadic college education and a failed marriage, Bourke-White moved to Cleveland. One of her early assignments was documenting the inner workings of the Otis Steel Mill where her interest in the subject matter drove her to capture the molten lava in such a detailed and dramatic manner that the varnish on her camera would often blister. She also would use the fabric from her dress as a focusing cloth over her camera.
Bourke-White soon gained attention from some of Cleveland''s most admirable men, who not only purchased her photographs, but also assisted her with carrying her equipment. Her ability to endow a sense of drama and romance to these and other formidable steel structures would make Bourke-White a nationally recognized photographer by the end of the 1920s and for decades following.
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February 14, 2007 10:30 AM EST
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