Portrait of Myself

Book excerpt: This is the story of the internationally acclaimed American woman Margaret Bourke-White, who for over thirty years made photographic history: as the first photographer to see the artistic and storytelling possibilities in American industry, as the first to write social criticism with a lens, and as the most distinguished and venturesome foreign correspondent-with-a-camera to report wars, politics and social and political revolution on three continents. In this poignant autobiography, Bourke-White details her fight against Parkinson’s disease, and recounts tales of her struggles to master her art and craft, of photographing Stalin, Gandhi and many other notables, of being torpedoed off North Africa while reporting World War II, of flying combat missions, of photographing the dread murder camps of Nazi Germany, of touring Tobacco Road to produce the book You Have Seen Their Faces with Erskine Caldwell (whom she later married), of adventures—and wonderful picture-taking—in the mines of South Africa, in the frozen North, in war-torn Korea. Illustrated throughout with over 70 of Margaret Bourke-White’s fine photographs, this is the great life story of a great American, greatly yet modestly told.