MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE

Vintage Photographs: Twenty Parachutes

November 13 - January 18, 2003

PRESS RELEASE

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This series of vintage photographs by Margaret Bourke-White (1904-1971) depicts an emblematic struggle between human ingenuity and natural forces.  Men and mannequins are shown tethered to and entangled with a giant silken parachute.  The scene is set on a featureless landscape where these characters struggle to keep their windblown parachute in toe.  These unique contact prints are being exhibited for the first time and are accompanied by a recent publication, Twenty Parachutes, by Nazraeli Press.

Margaret Bourke-White was an internationally renowned photojournalist who recorded people and events from the 1920s through the 1950s that shaped history.  She first became famous as an industrial photographer for Fortune Magazine, then as one of the original four staff members at LIFE Magazine.  Bourke-White was diagnosed later in life with Parkinson’s disease.