News Organizations and Titles: Fortune Magazine, 1929-35; staff photographer, Life Magazine, 1936-40, 1941-42, 1945 until death, 1971.
Legacy: She was a leader in photographing industrial America and produced many social documentaries. In doing so, she set the stage for Fortune to become a coffee-table magazine that featured outstanding photography and also proved that business can be visually exciting. She was an accomplished photojournalist who recorded historical world events in person, such as Germany's initial attack on Moscow in World War II.
Personal: Born June 14, 1906, in New York City; died Aug. 27, 1971, after a long struggle with Parkinson's Disease.
Family: She married Everett Chapman in 1924; divorced, 1926; married author Erskine Caldwell in 1939; divorced, 1942. No children.
Awards: Achievement Award, U.S. Camera, 1963; Honor Roll Award, American Society of Magazine Photographers, 1964.
Education: Attended Rutgers University, 1922; University of Michigan, 1923; Purdue University, 1924; Western Reserve University, 1925; received her B.A. from Cornell University, 1926-27.
Books:"The Story of Steel," 1928; "Eyes on Russia," 1931; "U.S.S.R. Photographs," 1934; "You Have Seen Their Faces," 1937; "North of the Danube," 1939; "Say, Is This the U.S.A.?," 1941; "Shooting the Russian War," 1942; "They Called It Purple Heart Valley: A Chronicle of the War in Italy," 1944; "Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly: A Report on the Collapse of Hitler's Thousand Years," 1946; "Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India," 1949; "A Report on the American Jesuits," 1956; "Portrait of Myself," 1963.
What she has said about herself: "The whole dynamic world of industry lay before me. All over America were railroads, docks, mines, factories waiting to be photographed--waiting, I felt, for me!"
What she has said about Henry Luce's photographic vision for Fortune: "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 civilization is, how it looks."
Home run stories or accomplishments: First staff photographer for Fortune. She later shot the first cover for Life, of Fort Peck dam in Montana.
What she made news or headlines for: During World War II, she became the first woman to be an accredited war correspondent.
What others have said about her: Theodore M. Brown: She "immersed herself in a variety of situations, extracted the essence of experience, managed to create powerful compositions while on the fly, and communicated information about the event through extremely succinct means: isolation of cogent details, juxtaposition of mutually reinforcing components, and generally head-on views of subjects."