PHS grad Bourke-White gets an exhibit at Rutgers...after 85 years

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Gutsy and adventurous, Margaret Bourke-White was a famed photographer whose major working period was during the Great Depression and World War II.

She was also a Plainfield High School graduate. Born in New York City, the family had moved to New Jersey and she lived between Plainfield and Bound Brook, in an area where families could choose between the two different school districts. They chose Plainfield.

Even at PHS, Bourke-White was what we today would call an edgy outsider. In a classic Plainfield putdown, one classmate recalled that students at PHS came in two varieties, the 'crystal chandelier set' and the 'linsey-woolsey set.' Margaret was decidedly linsey-woolsey.*



















Tractor Factory, Stalingrad, 1930.

Not to worry. By the mid-1930s, she was having her photos published as covers on Life magazine. Her photography of massive New Deal construction projects is visually stunning. She also traveled to the Soviet Union and photographed life there during this decade.

Ft. Peck Dam, Life, Nov. 23, 1936

During the war she did many shoots of war production and women war workers for the federal government. At the end of the war, she was in Germany and photographed the liberation of prisoners of the Nazi death camps.

One of Bourke-White's most famous 1930's photos.
(Click on picture to enlarge.)

After World War II, she spent time studying and photographing Mahatma Gandhi's passive resistance movement which led to independence for India in 1947.

The Rutgers exhibit is curated by Gary Saretzky, an historian of photography and coordinator of intern programs for Rutgers' history department, and will run through May 31.

The exhibit focuses on the public's perception of Bourke-White at the height of her career and features many clippings, magazine picture-stories and other memorabilia.

The exhibit is at the Alexander Library, 169 College Avenue, and is open to the public during Library hours.

For more information, call the Library at: (732) 932-7505. A 50-page catalog of the exhibit is available.

Parking, as always, is on the street and somewhat of a hassle.

Rutgers information on the exhibit is here and the University press release is here.

A Google search of visual images of Bourke-White works on the Web will bring up over 1,800.

-- Dan Damon

*Linsey-woolsey: A coarse, homespun woven fabric of wool and linen or of wool and cotton. Hence, a person who wore homespun fabrics or was unsophisticated. A class-based snobbism.

Keywords: Exhibit, PHS, photography
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