The Chrysler Building under construction. 1930. Toned silver print, the image measuring 33¾x23¾ cm, 13¼x9⅜ inches, the mount 53¼x36¼ cm, 21x14¼ inches; with Bourke-White's signature in pencil on mount recto.
A fearless trailblazer, Margaret Bourke-White was among the first photographers (and the first female photographer) hired for Fortune and Life magazines, the first female accredited as a war photographer, and the first woman to fly on a bombing mission. Her ambition in a male-dominated world pushed her to test her own limits and the limits of what a camera could capture (her colleagues at Life nicknamed her Maggie the Indestructible). Bourke-White's imagery was unique, powerful, and innovative, witnessing much of the 20th century's beauty and brutality.
In 1930, Bourke-White was commissioned by the Chrysler Corporation to photograph their new skyscraper while it was still under construction (it would briefly become the tallest structure in New York). This image documents the iconic terraced crown with its sunburst pattern partially covered in scaffolding. In this series, Bourke-White portrays a city that is powerful, reaching further and further into the sky and the future. In her autobiography, Portrait of Myself, Bourke-White says of her first glimpse of the Chrysler Building gargoyles, "On the sixty-first floor, the workmen started building some curious structures which overhung 42nd Street and Lexington Avenue below. When I learned these were to be gargoyles à la Notre Dame, but made of stainless steel as more suitable for the twentieth century, I decided that here would be my new studio. There was no place in the world that I would accept as a substitute. I was ready to close my studio in Cleveland in order to be nearer Fortune, but it was the gargoyles which gave me the final spurt to New York" (p. 78).
