A Generator Shell, Dnieperstroi

1928

Moves to Cleveland: an industrial photography studio

A year after graduating she moves from Ithaca to Cleveland, where she opens a commercial photography studio and concentrates on architectural and industrial work. Among her clients is the Otis Steel Company (other accounts say she went to work for it straight away as an industrial photographer).

summer 1929

Joins Fortune magazine

She accepts a post as associate editor and staff photographer at the new business magazine Henry Luce is launching in the fall. She holds it until 1935.

1930

First Western photographer admitted to the USSR

She is granted official access to document the industrial sites of the Soviet Union during the first five-year plan, the first Western professional photographer to be admitted. She returns in each of the next two summers, until 1932.

c. 1930

A studio in the Chrysler Building

The building’s management at first refuses to rent to a woman, but with a recommendation from Fortune, her principal employer at the time, she opens her studio there shortly afterwards. She hires John Vassos to design the deluxe interior, whose clean modern lines echo the building’s exterior.

1930–1932

Photographs Stalin, his mother, Radek and Eisenstein

On her trips she photographs Joseph Stalin and, in Georgia, his mother and great-aunt; she also portrays Karl Radek, Sergei Eisenstein and Hugh Cooper. The work in the USSR demanded great patience, and her impressions remained mixed but on the whole positive.

1931

“Eyes on Russia” in Fortune

Her Soviet photographs first appear in Fortune under the title “Eyes on Russia”; a book of the same name follows from Simon and Schuster.