«Under the same sky», an exhibiting cycle which introduces during a stage of the «Palazzo Vecchio» project in Florence, the retrospective dedicated to the charismatic figure of American twenties photographer: Margaret Bourke-White. The Florentine exhibition will remain open until the 17th of February 2002 and collects life instants which the American professional has captured through the strongest and most atrocious aspects of the past century.
A life which has led Margaret Bourke-White to start from 1929, through great photographic scoops. The first contact with the American magazine «Fortune» takes her overseas to immortalise with snap shots the Economical reprise of Germany at the end of the First World War to then return to her homeland to shoot what would then become the first «photo-essay» ever published on an American magazine, in 1936 for «Life»’s front cover, which ensures her a life-long contract with the important American magazine.
In 1941 she succeeds in obtaining a photographic session with Stalin; in 1946 in India she faces the wars for independence and then again in South Africa where in the 50’s she descends into a mine to photograph the harsh mine reality: two workers dead near 3 kilometres deep, shattered by the heat.
Thus it is that Margaret Bourke-White continued to work from one side to the other of the world running after images that have marked the history of photography and world chronicles, until, in 1957, she had to retire from her work stricken by an incurable disease.
In «Palazzo Vecchio» the retrospective dedicated to the American photographer, tells Margaret Bourke-White’s work through thirty years of images, images which tell of the marginalisation and difficulties in America, the concentration camps at the end of the World War, Gandhi’s India, South Africa’s miners, but also industrial expansion.
A trip through the world with Margaret Bourke-White’s eye. This retrospective, in the exhibition cycle «Sotto lo stesso cielo», will be followed in 2002 by «Travels through Islam», a photographic reportage made by Abbas, an Iranian photographer who for seven years has been through the Islamic world.
Margaret Bourke-White
Where: Sala d'Arme Palazzo Vecchio, Palazzo della Signoria
When: from the 7th December to the 17th February 2002
Schedule: 10-20 everyday; Thursday 10 - 22. Closed Mondays
Entry ticket: 12 thousand full ticket (6,20 euro); 8 thousand discounted (4 euro)
Information and booking: +39 02 54 913
December.2001
Florence Municipality
Contrasto (In Italian)
