The photography of design.

• Position: Focus - Photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White - Biography

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE strode brazenly into a field dominated by men to become not only a famous photojournalist, but a celebrity personality. Trained in modernist compositional techniques, Bourke-White photographed with an artist's eye, discovering beauty in the raw aesthetic of American industry and its factories. Her 1929 photograph, "Chrysler, Gears," emphasizes the immensity of the gear: the worker, placed barely inside the frame, is there only to provide a sense of scale.

By 1928, Bourke-White's photographs were appearing in newspapers and magazines nationwide. From 1928-36, she supported herself through corporate and magazine assignments and advertising. Her magazine work, though less lucrative than the corporate assignments, allowed for abstraction and compositional freedom. In these forceful works, it is apparent that she understood the drama of the diagonal and curve. She framed many of her photographs so that similarly shaped forms appeared repeatedly on a diagonal across the field of view and seemed to continue into infinite space beyond. In "Oliver Chilled Plow: Plow Blades" (1930), a close-up of the shiny steel surfaces verges on complete abstraction.

In 1929, Bourke-White was invited to become the "star photographer" for the new Henry Luce publication, Fortune magazine. Luce's plan was to use photography to document all aspects of business and industry, an idea that never had been tried before. Bourke-White's career is unimaginable without her relationship with Luce's media empire. Her swashbuckling style, ingenious and relentless self-promotion in an age that admired sell-made men and their fortunes, reverence for industry itself; and photo graphic homages to capitalism and technology made her the perfect lens for Luce's vision.

Bourke-White moved to New York City in 1930 and later that year was sent abroad to capture the rapidly growing German industry. Greater ambitions for this trip took her to the Soviet Union, where no foreign journalist previously had been allowed to document the country's progress. The USSR had built more than 1,500 factories...