Posted on September 14, 2026

My Photographic Heros no 16: Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White would have been a very interesting person to meet, her drive to achieve great images is impressive. She started out on commercial and architectural photography genres ending up being a photo journalist at a time when magazines support photographers to go out into the world and make images, in a time before TV magazines were how people learnt about the world and her world was huge, travelling extensively and making impressive images.

YouTube videos about: Margaret Bourke-White

Margaret Bourke-White Photographer (Documentary) – Part I: The First Female Photojournalist

Margaret Bourke-White Photographer (Documentary): Part II – Industrial Photography & Soviet Russia

Margaret Bourke-White Photographer (Documentary): Part III – The Great Depression & Life Magazine

Margaret Bourke-White Video by Mubarak Atmata, this is a good slideshow of her images.

What I learnt from Margaret Bourke-White

I know that she set up a lot of her images and that is heretical to the way I practice my own photography. However when I started as a photographer, in Brisbane Australia I started out as a commercial advertising photographer that also include making architectural images for advertising and editorial clients before I moved to London where I subsequently spent years making fashion images before I started to make street bases social documentary images.

This journey from one genre of photography to another is something that I have done in my own practice and that ability to shift areas of photography is something that I appreciate. She was fearless in that she went everywhere she could go, and was fortunate to be able to do so as she had photojournalism world that support travel and time spent to make images, this no longer exists in the editorial world. I also like how she was very good at promoting herself.