Apr
12
As a photographer, when I look for inspiration I seem to gravitate toward the pioneers in the industry. I find it in the photographers who broke new ground at a time when breaking that ground took such passion, will and determination. It’s no coincidence that many of my personal hero’s in that field are women. Capable and exceptional women are still fighting today to be recognized in a mans-world. They are still fighting for equal pay or to retain their right to choose. Imagine only recently having the right to vote, making your mark on that world and gaining the respect and admiration of your male-peers. Margaret Bourke-White is one of those women.
From Patrick Murfin’s blog about Margaret:
Sean Callahan, an awe struck admirer and author of the book Margaret Bourke-White: Photographer noted, “The woman who had been torpedoed in the Mediterranean, strafed by the Luftwaffe, stranded on an Arctic island, bombarded in Moscow, and pulled out of the Chesapeake when her chopper crashed, was known to the Life staff as ‘Maggie the Indestructible.”
Margaret not only entered a mans-world as photographer, she went where no woman photographer has gone before. She was assigned to Europe before WWII to document everyday life under Fascists in Italy, Nazi Germany and Soviet Communists. She was granted unprecedented access, 
including to Joseph Stalin. That rare shot of Joseph Stalin, smiling and relaxed appeared on the cover of Life.
When war broke out, she was there to cover it, surviving a Luftwaffe bombardment and firestorm in Moscow. She flew and documented combat bombing missions in North Africa, and survived artillery bombardment in Italy where the army was bogged down in a grueling mountain campaign. Margaret also followed General Patton’s Army toward the end of the war. She was with him at the Buchenwald Death Camp shortly after it was liberated. The photos she took were published in Time and were among the first and most detailed images that Americans were able to see. 
The experience was a tremendous shock, commenting later:
“Using my camera was almost a relief. It interposed a slight barrier between myself and the horror in front of me.”
Her next assignments took her to India where she documented the Independence of India and the bloody partition of India and Pakistan. Again having access and photographing the key players in that conflict including Mohandas Gandhi. The photograph of him, 
emaciated from fasting and sitting at his spinning wheel became one of the most recognizable images of him.
Margaret’s images still remain as some of the most moving and inspiring visual documents of WWII history. She, like so many women during WWII, stepped into a world previously dominate by men and showed her courage, strength and compassion. She did this, not in an age of iPhones and Instagram, she succeeded under the most dangerous and horrific circumstances.
She is a huge inspiration to me.
A few powerful examples of Margaret’s work:
Resources :
Sep
01
I have a short list of photographers who’s life and work have inspired me. Annie Leibovitz, Dorothea Lange, Richard Avedon to name a few. What draws me to a particular photographer, is a combination of the images they captured, the time in which they lived and obstacles they had to overcome in order to capture those images. Nothing could be more inspiring to me than the women, who in the turn of the century did not even have the right to vote and yet set out on incredible adventures across the globe to share their view of life. The woman who was truly THE pioneer of her time was Isabella Bird.
Isabella was born in 1832 in England. The daughter of a prominent Church Official, she was frail and sickly as a child. After the death of her parents she began to travel the world, visiting Australia, Hawaii (then known as the Sandwich Islands), America (where she explored the Rocky Mountains on horseback in 1878). After the death of her husband, Isabella made several trips to Central Asia, the Middle East, India, Tibet, Turkey and Kurdistan. She was a prolific author, was called by the London Times “The boldest of Travelers” and was the first woman named as a member of the Royal Geographic Society.
Today, we pull out our paper thin iPhones and with the push of a button on a screen we can capture anything we want. I am overwhelmed, not only by the courage it took for Isabella to travel to such remote and wild locations, but by the daunting logistics involved in capturing each one of her stunning images. The cameras of that day were huge, heavy and required an even heavier wooden tripod, and yet, she was able to expertly expose her images and engender such trust in her subjects. Even with a staff of guides and Sherpa’s, for a woman in that time to orchestrate and document years of travel was a monumental feat.
Here’s the pioneers of photography; And to Isabella Bird.
