Remembering Fortune’s first photographer on International Women’s Day

Kacy Burdette of Fortune writes about the magazine’s first photographer, the famous Margaret Bourke-White, on International Women’s Day.

Burdette writes, “After getting approval from the board, he asked 24-year-old photographer, Margaret Bourke-White, to come to New York. He explained to her his idea, that ‘the camera should explore every corner of industry, showing everything, from the steam shovel to the board of directors. The camera would act as interpreter, recording what modern industrial civilization is, how it looks, how it meshes.’ She then became Fortune’s first staff photographer and her work was largely used in the first issue.

“Her first photographs for Fortune February 1930 was for Parker Lloyd-Smith, Fortune‘s first managing editor’s, article titled ‘Tsaa -a Tsaa -a Tsaa -a’ on the meat-packing company, Swift & Company. Bourke-White thought the topic was ‘a wonderful choice’ but both her and Lloyd-Smith were unprepared for the unpleasant smell coming from one particular building. She wrote, ‘Countless times we had heard the well-worn adage that the Swifts used all the pig but the squeal. The sight that faced us proved it. Before us were pungent macabre mountains—rich tones of ochre in the yellow light—mountains of the finest pig dust…. Parker Lloyd-Smith took one sniff, bolted for the car and put up the windows tight while I took photographs. He had a long wait, for the yellow light had low actinic value and I had to make time exposures. When it was over, I left my camera cloth and light cords behind to be burned.’

“Her first photo portfolio in the same issue was of shipping and industry in the Great Lakes region titled ‘Trade Routes Across the Great Lakes.’ She is the only contributor to get credit in our initial issue (even the writers didn’t receive a byline at the time). She was already largely committed to photographing the industrial world. But she also became notable for photographing the changing scenes in the Soviet Union in 1930. She was ‘the first foreign photographer to have unlimited access to the Soviet Union.’ She also photographed some of the first pictures of speakeasies in action. Twenty-five years after her first photographs graced the large pages of Fortune she went back to the Great Lakes to photograph the lakes and ports for her last photo essay for Fortune in 1955.”

Read more here.