double exposure

Via Everlasting Blört, we are introduced to the portfolio of the pioneering and intrepid Margaret Bourke-White (*1904 – †1971), LIFE magazine’s first female staff photographer and the first accredited female photojournalist, covering World War II and its aftermath, including the liberation of concentration camps—prompting her to pen an autobiography (one of several) as a way to reconcile the horrors that she had witnessed.
First recognised for her architectural and industrial photography at a time when people seriously doubted that a woman had the constitution to enter a steel mill to take pictures much less work in one, Bouke-White became the only foreign reporter invited to document Josef Stalin’s implementation of his first five-year plan (1928 – 1932). Bouke-White was equally renowned for the calibre of her coverage of the partition of India and Pakistan, producing some memorable and iconic images that brought this conflict to the rest of the world. Friend and colleague Alfred Eisenstaedt credited Bouke-White’s success not merely to her uncanny knack to being in the right place at the right time (a talent to be sure) but to her belief that no photograph was unimportant. Incredibly, Bouke-White went on to establish the first photo laboratory at the magazine, which had previously outsourced its work.