Media star

• Margaret Bourke-White / Masters by Getty Images
  © Time & Life / Getty Images
• Photo: Margaret Bourke-White
  © Time & Life / Getty Images
• Photo: Margaret Bourke-White
  © Time & Life / Getty Images

The exhibition ‘Margaret Bourke-White. Photographs 1930–1945’ will be open from 18 January to 14 April 2013 at the Martin- Gropius-Bau in Berlin. In the male-dominated world of American photography, Margaret Bourke-White soon became a media star, albeit one who had to fight for all of her career achievements.

The cover photo on the first ever issue of Life magazine, published in November 1936, featured Bourke-White’s image of Peck Dam in Montana – one of the six major hydraulically filled dams along the Missouri River. The image captures the sheer power and scale of modern construction – by contrast, the figures in the lower part of the image appear to be the size of toys. Further publications of her work soon followed, and, particularly for her commissions for Life magazine, Bourke-White travelled the world throughout her career.

The exhibition consists of 154 photographs, letters and periodicals, with a focus on the pictures Bourke-White  took in the 1930s and 40s in the former Soviet Union, former Czechoslovakia, Germany, the UK and Italy.

Further information at
www.berlinerfestspiele.de

www.life.time.com