(
1904-
1971)
Photographer, born in the
Bronx to Minnie Bourke and Joseph White, an engineer and amateur photographer who died in 1921. Bourke-White received her B.A. from
Cornell in
1927, and did not choose photography as a career until a year after that. Her photographs from
Cleveland's Otis Steel
Foundry, taken 1927-28, set her career as an industrial photographer in gear, and her cover photograph for the premier issue of
LIFE in
1936 established her fame and success as a photo journalist. She was on staff for LIFE until 1951.
In 1931 she moved from Cleveland to New York City and got an office in the Chrysler building. In WWII, Bourke-White was the first women accredited as a war photographer, and captured images of General Patton on the forefront of a collapsing Germany. Bourke-White died in Connecticut from the effects of Parkinson's disease.
Among her best-known photographs are DC-4 Flying Over Manhattan (1939) and Statue of Liberty, New York Harbor (1952).