160
●
BOURKE-WHITE, MARGARET (1904-1971)
The Liberation of Buchenwald. Silver print, 10x13
1
/
2
inches (25.4x34.3 cm.), with a hand stamp
with Bourke-White’s credit and a date (1945), in ink, on verso. 1945; printed 1966-72
[20,000/30,000]
FromVernon Merritt III (1940-2000), a staff photographer at Life magazine from 1966-72.
Margaret Bourke-White’s haunting photograph depicting survivors of the death camp at Buchenwald, a village
near Weimar, is one of the startling images of the 20
th
century. Made in April 1945 on assignment for Life
magazine, Bourke-White was among a retinue of journalists and photographers accompanying General George
Patton’s Third Army through Germany.While pictures of Buchenwald, Bergen Belsen and other notorious
concentration camps were reproduced at the close of the war, interestingly, the image was not published until
nearly fifteen years later, when the magazine commemorated its silver anniversary on December 26, 1960.
