This Day in History: 1904-06-14

Margaret Bourke-White,  American photographer, is born on this day in 1904. Bourke-White got an early start as a commercial photographer and had a gift for solving technical problems that had eluded other photographers. She also understood the language of the medium, as can be seen in her portrait of Mahatma Gandhi, where the symbol of non-violence (the spinning wheel) is placed in front of the man himself, which is a metaphor for how Gandhi saw himself. Among her many “firsts,” Bourke-White took the first photo on the cover of Life magazine, was among the first female photographers in combat in WWII, and was the first western photographer to take photos of Soviet industry.