Margaret Bourke-WhiteAmerican, 1904–1971Buchenwald Camp Victims
Can I see it?
Not on view at present
Where is “Buchenwald Camp Victims” now? Collection: Art Institute of Chicago, Chicago. Not on view at present. Checked September 29, 2026.
Chicago, United States
It belongs to the collection, but is not on display at present.
- Checked
- In this state since
- Source
- The museum
Details
- Accession number
- 1957.137
In the catalog
Sources
- Art Institute of Chicago
- Image: Art Institute of Chicago — © the artist or rights holder
In the life of Margaret Bourke-White
The whole life22 January 1943
First woman to fly a combat mission, in a B-17
Attached to the US Army Air Forces in North Africa, she flies in the lead aircraft, Major Rudolph Emil Flack’s B-17F of the 414th Bombardment Squadron, on the bombing of the El Aouina airdrome in Tunis, Tunisia. She is the first female photographer and writer to fly on a combat mission.
22 February 1943
An article in Life on the sinking of the Strathallan
Life runs her article “Women in Lifeboats” on the sinking of the British troopship SS Strathallan, bound from England to Africa: torpedoed in the Mediterranean, she shared a lifeboat with the Irishwoman Kay Summersby, Eisenhower’s chauffeur and secretary, and became friendly with her, though Eisenhower himself disliked her. On the Life staff she was known as “Maggie the Indestructible.”
spring 1945
Photographs liberated Buchenwald
She arrives at the Buchenwald concentration camp and photographs it. She later said that using the camera was almost a relief, creating a slight barrier between her and the horror in front of her.
spring 1945
Through collapsing Germany with General Patton
In spring 1945 she travels through a collapsing Germany with General George S. Patton; before that, accompanying American troops in Italy, she repeatedly came under fire in areas of fierce fighting.
1946
Goes to India to photograph the independence struggle
Life sends her to India to document the country’s struggle for freedom. In her photograph of Gandhi she expressively places the spinning wheel, a symbol of Indian independence, in the foreground.
1947
Records the violence of the partition of India
She becomes one of the most effective chroniclers of the violence that erupted at the independence and partition of India and Pakistan: streets littered with corpses, the dead with open eyes, refugees with vacant stares. Her photographs of Dr. Bhimrao Ramji Ambedkar at his home in Mumbai are known equally well in India and Pakistan; she also photographed Gandhi and Pakistan’s founder, Mohammed Ali Jinnah.
