Margaret BOURKE-WHITE (1904 – 71) Gelatin silver print, New Deal, Montana: Fort Peck Dam, 1936, 15 1/4 x 19 1/4 in. on a 20” x 16” mount. Signed and inscribed by the photographer at the bottom right “For John Bryson — the knowingist — with affection Maggie Bourke-White”
This was the image that graced the front cover of the first issue of Life on 23 November 1936 and launched Bourke-White’s career in photojournalism. Bourke-White had worked as a staff photographer and associate editor at Fortune beginning in 1929. In 1930, she became the first Western photographer allowed to take photographs of Soviet industry. Lured away by Henry Luce’s new Life magazine in 1936, her first assignment was to photograph the massive Army Corps of Engineers dam and spillway at Fort Peck, Montana. The images, both of the massive engineering project together with the daily lives and diversions of those who were building it, established her reputation as one of America’s foremost photojournalists.
The photograph is inscribed to her colleague at Life, photographer John Bryson (1924 – 2005) circa 1953-55. Bryson had moved in to the photo editing department at Life in 1953 where he would work for two years before leaving the magazine to become a freelance photographer. As can be discerned in the signature, Bourke-White began to show the early signs of Parkinson’s disease which would force her to retire from Life in 1957. The symptoms first began to appear in 1953 which corresponds with Bourke-White and Bryson’s shared tenure at the magazine. Bryson was a gifted photographer specializing in intimate portraits of celebrities and world leaders. He worked extensively with Arthur Miller and Marilyn Monroe, Armand Hammer, and Katharine Hepburn. Perhaps Bryson’s most noted image is his photograph of Ernest Hemingway ‘kicking the can’ in Ketchum, Idaho that appeared in Life in 1959.
An extremely rare signed photograph. Although signed examples of Margaret Bourke-White’s U.S.S. Akron appear in the market on a regular basis, signed examples of this, her most iconic image, are prohibitively rare. Two unsigned examples have appeared in the past thirty years. A superb association between two important American photographers.
Minor wear to mount, some crazing to print with a few minor abrasions not detracting.
(EXA 3927) SOLD.
