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where she recorded the devastating event for the nation’s popular picture magazine.
In addition to recording the disaster, Bourke-White’s powerful representation addresses the widening
racial divide, and the economic gap, during the late Depression, between the middle and working
classes, a social condition heightened by this natural disaster. The topicality of extreme hardships
faced by minorities renders Bourke-White’s image an icon of visual culture.
The Photographs of Margaret Bourke-White,
p. 136-37.
For theWorld to See:The Life of Margaret Bourke-White,
p. 124.
Picturing the South: 1860 to the Present,
p. 124.
Therese Mulligan & DavidWooters,
Photography from 1839 to Today: George Eastman House,
p. 592.