Things of beauty

ASEE Prism, May/Jun 2003

It would be wrong to say that Margaret Bourke-White's industrial photographs of are works that only an engineer could appreciate. The beauty of her art is accessible to all, but many of her pre-war photos are portraits that engineers might especially enjoy. Bourke-White had a long career and is particularly famous for her WWII images in Life magazine. But she first made her mark as a photographer of industry, and her photos helped create the original look of Fortune magazine, where many of them were featured. A new exhibit that focuses on her work from that era, "Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design, 1927-1936," is at Washington's Phillips Collection through May 11 and will tour a number of venues across the country, including Sarasota, Fla., Charlotte, N.C., Fort Wayne, Ind., and Portland, Maine.

Bourke-White's father was an engineer and inventor who took her to a foundry when she was only 8. That began her lifelong fascination with machines. There are black-and-white images of smokestacks, furnaces, and clams, all shot from unusual and arresting angles. There are close-ups of stacks of bundled aluminum wire, boxes of freshly-milled nuts, gears, airplane propellers, and plow blades, all lit dramatically, as if they were fashion icons. Bourke-White, in addition to her Fortune work, also did commissioned photography for industry during this period, including advertisements and commemorative books. Humans are not often pictured in her shots, and they're usually dwarfed by machines when they are. She loved architecture, as well. And the show includes photos she took during the construction of New York's Chrysler Building. The exhibit also includes shots of industrializing Russia and Germany taken in the 1930s. Bourke-White showed the world that industrial design not only has utility but can be a thing of beaut).