March 11, 2026
Written by Georgina Laube
For decades, photography has occupied a complicated position: dismissed at times as mere documentation, yet simultaneously employed to shape public memory. It was the first medium to meaningfully collapse the distance between nations and cultures, bringing distant events into people’s homes. Few forms of communication carry the same presumption of accuracy. Photography has long underscored the notion that “seeing is believing,” and in doing so, it has profoundly shaped our understanding of history, conflict, and identity. Whether we acknowledge it or not, much of our worldview is constructed through the images we consume. In many cases, photography has become our cultural truth.
Since its inception, however, the photographic medium, particularly photojournalism, has been largely dominated by men. And in many ways, it still is. Emerging in the mid-nineteenth century, war quickly became one of its defining subjects, so central that photojournalism itself is often understood as having grown out of war photography. From the Mexican–American War, the first conflict to have photographic evidence, to the Crimean War, the first extensively documented war, photography is historically employed as a tool of record and reportage. Yet due to systemic barriers and rigid beliefs about women’s roles, documentary photography remained largely inaccessible to female practitioners.
Plow blades, Oliver Child Plow Co, South bend, Indiana, 1930 | Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery
The absence of women in a field that actively constructs our visual culture and collective memory is striking. It makes it all the more crucial to revisit those who broke through its barriers. For not only do we owe to them to merely acknowledge their often overlooked presence, but to recognize that their perspective itself also shapes our history. It is imperative that it is more understood that women are not passive bystanders to cultural memory. Very often they are the ones actively shaping it. It is precisely this recognition that makes the latest exhibition at Monroe Gallery of Photography not only compelling, but timely. By allowing us to intimately revisit Margaret Bourke-White’s works, the Monroe Gallery offers more than a historical survey; it actively confronts and corrects not only the history of the medium but history as a whole.
Diversion Tunnels, Ft. Peck Dam, MT, 1936 | Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery
Bourke-White was not only a pioneer for women, she also actively used her lens to shape American visual identity. A founding photographer of Life magazine and the photographer of its first cover, she shaped how twentieth-century America saw itself and its place in the world. And with that how we reflect on that period in the contemporary period. She documented the Great Depression and the Dust Bowl, photographed the liberation of concentration camps at the end of World War II, and captured the final images of Mahatma Gandhi. Yet despite the scale of her influence, her name is too often overshadowed by her male contemporaries and insufficiently centered in photographic history.
Farmer Art Blooding with family battling "dust bowl" winds white inspecting his newly bought farm, Colorado, April, 1954| Margaret Bourke-White/©Life Picture Collection | Courtesy of Monroe Gallery
When she is overlooked in the history of photography, she is, in effect, overlooked in history itself. and so too is the role of women in shaping it. On view until April 26, 2026, Monroe Gallery of Photography uses its space to serve as a reminder that the visual memory we inherit was, in part, constructed through her lens.
