The Industrial revelations of Margaret Bourke-White

A native of the Bronx, N.Y., Margaret Bourke-White (1904-71) first gained recognition as an industrial photographer based in Cleveland. "I stood on the deck to watch the city come into view," she said of her Lake Erie boat trip to the Ohio city. "As the skyline took form in the morning mist, I felt I was coming to my promised land ... columns of machinery gaining height as we drew toward the pier, derricks swinging like living creatures. Deep inside, I knew these were my subjects."

During her unique career, Bourke-White was stranded in the Arctic, strafed by the German Luftwaffe, torpedoed in the Mediterranean Sea, bombarded in Moscow, and pulled from Chesapeake Bay after her helicopter crashed. She was the first Western journalist to document Soviet industry after the Russian Revolution as well as create a travelogue of the Balkan states right before German dictator Adolph Hitler moved in to ignite World War II.

Bourke-White studied photography as a hobby while still a young woman. Her father, Joseph, a naturalist and inventor, was somewhat of a camera enthusiast. Still, when she went off to Columbia University in New York City, it was to study herpetology. However, after meeting Clarence White, a leader in the pictorial school of photography, her interest in that subject was accelerated. After transferring among numerous colleges, Bourke-White eventually graduated from Cornell University, Ithaca, N.Y., where she had made a photographic study of the rural campus for the school newspaper. She then moved to Cleveland to begin her new career.

Bourke-White began as a commercial photographer, documenting the achievements of corporations. Fearless from the outset, she would get so close to the pouring metal in Cleveland's steel mills that her face would turn sunburn-red and her camera's finish would blister. The shapes of industrial design fascinated her, and she was captivated by the mechanical muscle and sheen of it all. An excellent example is "Industrial Cable" (1930), in which Bourke-White accentuates the beautiful fabric of metal wires woven like braids of gold yarn. Her early efforts oftentimes highlighted the moguls of industry and the hidden beauty in the worlds they dominated.

"Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1927-1936," the first major exhibition devoted to the critical early years in the life of this pioneering photojournalist, features approximately 150 photographs, many of which have not been seen by the general public since the early 1930s. It will be on view at the Oklahoma City Museum of Art (April 13-June 12); Frick Art and Historical Center, Pittsburgh, Pa. (June 24-Sept. 4), and the Tacoma (Wash.) Art Museum (Sept. 24-Jan. 15, 2006).

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