She Showed America the World

She Showed America the World, a historical biography,109,000 words.

"Elephant's ears, Beme! You sure know your onions. This is a great print!" The negative was crisp and the print perfect. Both were well beyond my skills in 1927. That would change.

Bourke-White was an iconoclast, a tradition breaker, well beyond Avant-Garde, a female photographer who stomped on tradition and earned nearly a half million dollars in one year by getting the photograph no one else could get. Within the first decade of her industrial photography, she fulfilled her fantasy which she had written in her diary at age 24: I'm going to become rich and famous.

In her life, accompanied by a merry-go-round of lovers, she was the first female photographer to be accepted in Russia three different years to document that nation's Five Year plan (1928-1933). A restless patriot, she was present in Moscow during the German blitz of 1942, then groveled in the mud with soldiers on four continents during World War II. Even if she was kicked out of the service on several occasions for unbecoming conduct, she photographed the battles, the heroes, the lives of G.I.s and the incredible angst of surgical operations in front line hospitals.

She covered India, South Africa, and when she found time, she wrote a dozen nonfiction books about her travels, photographs, and life. In toto, she showed America the world.