(1904 – 1971)

Margaret Bourke-White She was an American photographer and documentary filmmaker. She was born in New York on June 14, 1904. She became interested in photography when she studied at Cornell University. She was a student of Clarence H. White at Columbia University and later opened her studio in Cleveland where she specialized in architectural photography. She was the first female war correspondent (and the first woman allowed to work in combat zones in World War II) and the first female photographer to work for Life magazine, directed by Henry Luce. A photograph of him was on the cover of the first edition, on November 23, 1936.

She was a leftist woman who made several trips to the former Soviet Union (USSR). In 1930, she was the first western photographer to be allowed to photograph Soviet industry. In 1931 she published “Eyes on Russia”. Deeply sensitized by depression in the country, she became interested in politics.

He married Erskine Caldwell in 1939 and they were the only foreign journalists in the occupied USSR after the invasion of the German army in 1941.

In the spring of 1945, he traveled through a destroyed Germany with Maj. George S. Patton. When he arrived at Buchenwald, the infamous concentration camp, after recording the remains, he said: “Using a camera was almost a relief. It put a slight barrier between the horror in front of me and myself.” After the war, he produced a book titled “Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly,” a project that helped him understand the brutality he had witnessed during and after the war.

After World War II, he became interested in the non-violence campaign promoted by Gandhi.