Enright, Robert. ‘‘Getting the Inside Outside: An Interview
with Robert Bourdeau.’’
Robert Bourdeau: Industrial Sites. Toronto: Jane Corkin
Gallery. 1998.
Livingstone, David. ‘‘More than the Eye Can See.’’
Maclean’s(December 3, 1979).
Michaels, Anne. ‘‘The Station Point—The Photographs of
Robert Bourdeau.’’Border Crossings. 1998.
Thomas, Ann. ‘‘An Inquiry Into the Aesthetics of Photo-
graphy.’’Arts Canada(1974).
Thomas, Ann. ‘‘Robert Bourdeau: In Praise of the Lucid.’’
Arts Canada(1977).
White, Minor.Mirrors, Messages, Manifestations.Camera.
Switzerland, 1969.
‘‘Memento Mori—Photographs by Robert Bourdeau.’’
Fortune(May 29, 2000).
‘‘Robert Bourdeau, Photographer of Transcendental
Light.’’PhotoLife Magazine(1992).
‘‘Robert Bourdeau: Industrial Sites.’’ Queen’s Quarterly
106/1 (Spring 1999).
Wise, Kelly, ed.The Photographer’s Choice. Dansbury, NH:
Addison, 1976.MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE
American
Bourke-White’s career reads as a sequence of mile-
stones and she had a knack of being in the right
place at the right time. She knew which genres and
styles of photography would sell. She was a risk
taker who, once her path of attack was strategized,
would not be satisfied until she had attained her
objectives. In many instances, these involved taking
considerable risk in forcing her cameras and light-
ing equipment right into the midst of heavy indus-
trial or military action. She herself was an invader
in as much as she took pictures of private scenarios,
often without asking permission and almost always
rearranging the scene for dramatic effect. She was
also cognizant of how manipulating her own image
as a woman familiar with the inner workings of high
executive circles could open doors. Publicity shots
she had taken of herself at work—leaning over sky-
scraper parapets, taking a shot right in the middle
of trafficked downtown streets, peering into indus-
trial sites, surrounded by Russian crowds, all posed
and costumed in the height of fashion—were argu-
ably as effective as the shots she took in making her
name a national byline by 1930 and a national
buzzword by the early 1940s.
Bourke-White was a consummate, if not innova-
tive, photographic communicator. Her pictures
worked either the ‘‘dramatic angle, neutral back-
ground, luminous lighting... and subject...to create
an idealized picture’’ or ‘‘the chaos of patterns...
vibrat[ing] to disturb the viewer’’ (Puckett 1984,
33). She also excelled in pre-visualizing photos as
components of stories. Raw materials—both human
and nonhuman—were refined, processed, and ulti-
mately transformed into marketable products.
In 1927 when Bourke-White, aged 23, established
a commercial practice as an estate, industrial, and
corporate photographer in Cleveland, she was
already a skilled marketer and entrepreneur. Edu-
cated in public schools in New Jersey, she was
encouraged by her parents in science and engineer-
ing but excelled in writing, drama, debating, and
organizing student activities. She took a photogra-
phy course at the Clarence H. White School of
Photography during her freshman year at Colum-
bia University, New York. After her father died and
she was forced to fund her higher education, she
freelanced during subsequent student years at the
University of Ann Arbor, Michigan. As a senior at
Cornell University, Ithica, New York in 1926–1927,
she established a small business photographing the
campus for the alumni newsletter and marketing
prints through various sales outlets. Her competi-
tive edge over John Troy, campus photographer,
consisted in unusual angles of view; taking advan-
tage of mood-inducing atmosphere and natural and
artificial lighting; composing rhythmic shapes and
patterns; and taking multiple exposures and views
so as to ensure a marketable ‘‘hit.’’ These would be
the leitmotifs of her success throughout an adven-
turous, nonstop globe-trotting career that only Par-
kinson’s disease could terminate. Equally key were
the contacts she made with high-placed, influentialBOURDEAU, ROBERT