The photography of design

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE strode brazenly into a field dominated by men to become not only a famous photojournalist, but a celebrity personality. Trained in modernist compositional techniques, Bourke-White photographed with an artist's eye, discovering beauty in the raw aesthetic of American industry and its factories. Her 1929 photograph, "Chrysler, Gears," emphasizes the immensity of the gear: the worker, placed barely inside the frame, is there only to provide a sense of scale.

By 1928, Bourke-White's photographs were appearing in newspapers and magazines nationwide. From 1928-36, she supported herself through corporate and magazine assignments and advertising. Her magazine work, though less lucrative than the corporate assignments, allowed for abstraction and compositional freedom. In these forceful works, it is apparent that she understood the drama of the diagonal and curve. She framed many of her photographs so that similarly shaped forms appeared repeatedly on a diagonal across the field of view and seemed to continue into infinite space beyond. In "Oliver Chilled Plow: Plow Blades" (1930), a close-up of the shiny steel surfaces verges on complete abstraction.

In 1929, Bourke-White was invited to become the "star photographer" for the new Henry Luce publication, Fortune magazine. Luce's plan was to use photography to document all aspects of business and industry, an idea that never had been tried before. Bourke-White's career is unimaginable without her relationship with Luce's media empire. Her swashbuckling style, ingenious and relentless self-promotion in an age that admired sell-made men and their fortunes, reverence for industry itself; and photo graphic homages to capitalism and technology made her the perfect lens for Luce's vision.

Bourke-White moved to New York City in 1930 and later that year was sent abroad to capture the rapidly growing German industry. Greater ambitions for this trip took her to the Soviet Union, where no foreign journalist previously had been allowed to document the country's progress. The USSR had built more than 1,500 factories since 1928 under a rapid industrialization plan, and Bourke-White was intent on capturing its growth on film: "With my enthusiasm for the machine as an object of beauty, I felt the story of a nation trying to industrialize almost overnight was just cut out for me," she said.

The Soviet images differ from her other work in their incorporation of human subjects as the emphasis. In fact, the photographs from the USSR are overwhelmingly narrative and were a significant step for Bourke-White in her development as a photojournalist. To supplement her salary from Fortune, she accepted several assignments to produce mural-size photographs, which culminated in 1933 when NBC hired her to create the biggest photographic mural in the U.S. for the rotunda of their studios in Rockefeller Center. In 1935, she began taking aerial photographs for several airlines, which gave her skills that she used on many of her future photographic assignments.

The first major exhibition devoted to the critical early years in the life of Bourke-White features approximately 150 photographs, many of which have not been seen by the general public since the early 1930s. Beginning with her pictorialist view of Cleveland's Terminal Tower in 1927 and culminating with her well-known shots for the cover and lead story of the first issue of Life magazine, the exhibition explores her formative years in which she developed her aesthetic vision and forged new territory in the field of photojournalism.

"Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1927-1936," will be on view at the Portland (Me.) Museum of Art through March 20. It then can be seen at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (April 13-June 12), Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. (June 24-Sept. 4), and Tacoma (Wash.) Art Museum (Sept. 24-Jan. 15, 2006).

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