MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE

This entry in the Trailblazers series offers readers an admiring look at photographer Margaret Bourke-White. In 1904, when Margaret was born, women were not allowed to vote and were not encouraged to have careers, but Margaret’s parents pressed all three of their children to “do their best and become independent.” For Margaret that meant exploring, and she became excited by all that she saw in nature. Her father, an inventor, was interested in the camera, a preoccupation he passed on to Margaret. At Columbia University, Margaret took a course in photography, and from there never looked back. Her single-minded focus on her photography and career left her with two failed marriages, no children, and a life with virtually no friends as she suffered with Parkinson’s disease alone at the end of her life. Welch (Clouds of Terror, 1994) portrays Margaret sympathetically, and if readers are troubled to learn that she couldn’t have it all, they will respect the woman who followed her dream, and seek out more complex biographies for the rest of the story. (b&w photos, notes, bibliography, index) (Biography. 9-12)