There is one photograph perhaps more emblematic than the others. It portrays a line composed exclusively of Black flood victims waiting for assistance. Looming over them is a giant billboard depicting the highest standard of living, that of a white family (parents, children, and dog): There’s no Way Like the American Way. For me, this is the photo that can serve as both cover and title for this critical review recounting the retrospective of Margaret Bourke-White, organized by the Fondazione Palazzo Magnani di Reggio Emilia, in collaboration with Camera – Centro italiano per la Fotografia, at the Chiostri di San Pietro venue, curated by Monica Poggi. The photograph is titled Flood Refugees, Louisville, Kentucky, dates from 1937, and is certainly among the most celebrated works by the New York photographer, born in 1904 and deceased in 1971.
“Margaret Bourke-White. L’opera 1930-1960”, installation view at Chiostri di San Pietro, Reggio Emilia, ph. outThere_collective, courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia
Divided into six sections, the exhibition, titled “Margaret Bourke-White. Artworks 1930-1960”, retraces, through more than one hundred twenty photographs, the various stages of a career marked by great pioneering courage (bordering on recklessness) and a character trait «compelling, in line with her personal story which, from the beginning, established itself as a novelty in the American social landscape starting with the adoption of a double surname, possible only in a very progressive family», explains curator Monica Poggi. «Margaret Bourke-White’s work represents a significant piece of American history – states Marco Massari, mayor of Reggio Emilia – which fits into our broader program of reflections on what the American century was. And, in this context, Chiostri di San Pietro will be the city’s focal center on imagery». Certainly, an important event of the stars and stripes century was the birth, in November 1936, of LIFE magazine, aimed at the general public and featuring an important photography section. Bourke-White would be the first female photographer to join the weekly’s editorial staff, beginning with reportages on industry and shipbuilding: the world of factories holds centrality in «the multiple prism and constant restlessness that characterized Margaret Bourke-White’s personality», as stated by Walter Guadagnini, until October 2, 2025, and for many years artistic director of CAMERA – Centro Italiano per la Fotografia in Turin. The second section displays many photographs centered on turbines, smokestacks, industrial hangars and also the consumerism that developed around industrial areas, during the full New Deal phase, the economic revival program launched by Franklin Delano Roosevelt’s presidency in the aftermath of the severe 1929 crisis. And, in a display case rich with original and dated issues of LIFE, stands out the gem, in terms of smaller dimensions than the newsstand version, of the pilot copy of the magazine reserved for shareholders so they would invest in the magazine.
“Margaret Bourke-White. L’opera 1930-1960”, installation view at Chiostri di San Pietro, Reggio Emilia, ph. outThere Collective, courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia
«This exhibition has among its merits – states Maurizio Corradini, president of Fondazione Palazzo Magnani – that of dismantling the cloud of prejudices that surrounded Margaret Bourke-White’s photographic work. A photographer who was not just a testimonial, albeit with an always very personal viewpoint, of the American Way of Life, but also a professional capable of investigating historical, political and civil consciousness facts». Undoubtedly, she was a photographer capable of living her own contemporaneity and having great faith in progress: this is demonstrated by the section dedicated to skyscrapers, another product of human ingenuity that exercised great fascination on Bourke-White (after all, «her first photographs depict the buildings of the university campus», Monica Poggi emphasizes). Even in this case, there is no lack of acrobatic adventure that led her to harness herself to a helicopter to best capture her beloved New York and inaugurate aerial photography that would return, for other reasons, as central during the war period.
“Margaret Bourke-White. L’opera 1930-1960”, installation view at Chiostri di San Pietro, Reggio Emilia, ph. outThere Collective, courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia
«The human subjects that Margaret Bourke-White portrays never enter into empathy. – adds the curator – The photograph of a human being serves her to tell a collective story. And this happens both in the case of an Eskimo and of powerful personalities like Stalin». Among the photographer’s firsts is also that of being the only foreigner to portray the revolutionary, politician and military leader who governed the Soviet Union after Lenin’s death, using her usual weapon of daring: she deliberately dropped some flashes and, since the dictator smiled at this, captured his face in that precise instant for the cover of an issue of LIFE dedicated to the Soviet Union’s utopia. It’s not a first but certainly an extraordinary gift: it’s «Bourke-White’s ability to sense where history is going and therefore find herself in Moscow when it was bombed by the Germans in 1941» (Monica Poggi) and, as her character demanded, she defied the prohibition against going out at night to take some shots.
“Margaret Bourke-White. L’opera 1930-1960”, installation view at Chiostri di San Pietro, Reggio Emilia, ph. outThere Collective, courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia
Another leader of history portrayed by the photographer is Gandhi, immortalized in the company of a spinning wheel, symbol of Indian resistance to British colonization. Daring and instinct for the direction history takes manifest once again when Margaret Bourke-White follows American troops and cinematographers marching in the liberation of some European areas up to Buchenwald, a photographic reportage punctually published in LIFE under the title “Atrocities”. This section is also enriched by photographs regarding the photographer’s passage through the Tuscan-Emilian Apennines, heading north, and therefore represent a globally local touch to an international curriculum. The aerial view we have already discussed manifests further in photographs recalling Allied bombings of European cities, and the explanation for this insistence of the photographer on such a viewpoint is clear as well as essential: an aerial photo documents atrocities less, softening their visual evidence and therefore the emotional reactions of those observing them. Close-up photography, or very close-up, instead exalts human cruelty: this is the case of reportages from Pakistan (concurrent with the aforementioned Indian independence movement and the consequent 1947 partition, during which the double biblical exodus of Hindus from Pakistan to India and, in the opposite direction, of Muslims, was marred by immense reciprocal violence) and also from the Korean War (which involved the USA). This world without borders, and especially the fact of having set foot in socialist-communist states – first and foremost the Soviet Union – earned her the risk of being labeled an ‘enemy of the United States’ during the McCarthy period (the 1950s). New photographic projects date to this decade, which recall, always with an attentive eye to social issues, the patriotic stars and stripes lifestyle. And her social gaze reemerges powerfully, as soon as the McCarthy storm ends, with a project on internal segregation (South Carolina) and on external segregation (apartheid South Africa).
Margaret Bourke-White. L’opera 1930-1960”, installation view at Chiostri di San Pietro, Reggio Emilia, ph. outThere Collective, courtesy Fondazione Palazzo Magnani, Reggio Emilia
Margaret Bourke-White expresses her aforementioned faith in progress also in scientific terms by submitting herself, once Parkinson’s disease was discovered in her own body and mind, to delicate and pioneering brain surgery. This final and painful passage of her life is documented in LIFE and the photography star (recognized on the street like a celebrity) could thus stop chasing social suffering, humanity’s progress, and the great passages of history. As stated by municipal culture assessor Marco Mietti, «among Margaret Bourke-White’s many merits must also be counted that of having made photography a popular art, effectively oscillating between the great event of international politics and the everyday dimension». The exhibition is completed by a cycle of meetings on American Dream and related topics, some very precious display cases containing some issues of LIFE and other editorial publications, Braille captions for some significant photographs, and a program of specific educational visits for elementary school students.
Info:
Margaret Bourke-White. Artworks 1930-1960
25/10/2025 – 8/02/2026
Chiostri di San Pietro – Reggio Emilia
www.palazzomagnani.it
I am Giovanni Crotti, born in 1968, and I feel obliged to thank writing because it drives my life. I cultivate within me multitudes that lead me to investigate, know, and deepen every cultural and creative expression, and then write about it, always trying to be clear and documented in the contents.
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