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Wednesday, October 22, 2014


Art
 

9:00 AM - 5:00 PM, October 22



Context: Reading the Photography of Margaret Bourke-White
Syracuse University Library Special Collections Research Center

Price: Free
Bird Library, 6th Floor
Syracuse University, Syracuse

Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) was a celebrity behind, and in front of, the camera. As a photographer for Life magazine from the 1930s through the 1950s, she documented unforgettable moments--African-American flood victims in Louisville, KY, standing in a bread line beneath a banner that reads almost mockingly "There's No Way Like the American Way"; just-liberated survivors of the Buchenwald Concentration Camp returning the camera's gaze under an eerily cinematic light; Mahatma Gandhi sitting cross-legged on the floor reading, spinning wheel in the foreground. Bourke-White's photographs helped shape the way millions of Americans experienced the Great Depression, the Second World War, and the world that followed.

In front of the camera she cultivated an image of herself as fearless, undaunted in pursuit of her "shot," and fashionable, donning fine clothes and a coquettish smile.

After three decades in the public eye Bourke-White began to write her memoirs in the early 1950s. When Portrait of Myself finally appeared in 1963, she had already published ten books, countless essays, and been the subject of many interviews. In fact, but for the occasional gallery exhibition, text had always surrounded Bourke-White's photographs. This exhibition explores how text "framed" the photography of Margaret Bourke-White and, ultimately, how she sought to transcend the limits of the medium that made her famous.


 

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