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Margaret Bourke-White was a pioneering aerial photographer and is remembered as one of the first female photojournalists. Born in New York on 14 June 1904 into a middle class family, Bourke-White was home-schooled by her mother. Her father was an engineer and inventor. She began to take photographs to finance herself whilst a student at Cornell University and, by 1928, developed a particular eye for architectural and industrial photography. In 1930 she was taken on by Fortune magazine, and despatched to the Soviet Union to photograph its industrial installations. Soon she was their principal photographer, and her career took off quickly. She became well known for scaling the Chrysler Building during its construction in 1930 to produce some of the most memorable images of New York ever taken. In 1936, Bourke-White became one of the founders of Life magazine, and contributed its first cover image – an artfully composed shot of the Fort Peck Dam, Montana. This was the first of many assignments for the magazine. During the Second World War, Bourke-White became the first female photojournalist both to be allowed in combat zones and to fly in a combat mission. At the end of the war, she took shocking images of the newly liberated Buchenwald concentration camp that reverberated around the world. Bourke-White died in Darien, Connecticut, on 27 August 1971 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease. Margaret Bourke-White 1904-1971