{ "data": { "id": 449533, "accession_number": "2021.211", "share_license_status": "Copyrighted", "tombstone": "Man Pulling a Steel Ingot, late 1920s. Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904\u20131971). Gelatin silver print; image: 24.6 x 17.3 cm (9 11/16 x 6 13/16 in.); paper: 25.7 x 20.2 cm (10 1/8 x 7 15/16 in.). The Cleveland Museum of Art, Gift of William and Margaret Lipscomb, 2021.211", "current_location": null, "title": "Man Pulling a Steel Ingot", "creation_date": "late 1920s", "creation_date_earliest": 1925, "creation_date_latest": 1929, "artists_tags": [ "female", "May Show" ], "culture": [ "America" ], "technique": "gelatin silver print", "support_materials": [], "department": "Photography", "collection": "PH - American 1900-1950", "type": "Photograph", "measurements": "Image: 24.6 x 17.3 cm (9 11/16 x 6 13/16 in.); Paper: 25.7 x 20.2 cm (10 1/8 x 7 15/16 in.)", "dimensions": { "image": { "height": 0.246, "height_inch": 9, "height_inch_fraction": 0.6875, "width": 0.173, "width_inch": 6, "width_inch_fraction": 0.8125 }, "paper": { "height": 0.257, "height_inch": 10, "height_inch_fraction": 0.125, "width": 0.202, "width_inch": 7, "width_inch_fraction": 0.9375 } }, "state_of_the_work": null, "edition_of_the_work": null, "copyright": null, "inscriptions": [ { "inscription": "Stamped in purple ink on verso: \"REF. DEPT./8-1136/N.E.A.\"", "inscription_translation": null, "inscription_remark": null, "sortorder": null }, { "inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"Rolling [white?]\"", "inscription_translation": null, "inscription_remark": null, "sortorder": null }, { "inscription": "Imprinted in black type on verso: \"Margaret Bourke-White photo-Courtesy of Ludlum Steel Co\"", "inscription_translation": null, "inscription_remark": null, "sortorder": null }, { "inscription": "Written in pencil on verso: \"[illegible]/A244\"", "inscription_translation": null, "inscription_remark": null, "sortorder": null } ], "exhibitions": { "current": [], "legacy": [] }, "provenance": [ { "description": "William S. and Margaret Lipscomb, Shaker Heights, OH, given to The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH", "citations": [], "footnotes": null, "date": "?-2021", "sortorder": 1 }, { "description": "The Cleveland Museum of Art, Cleveland, OH", "citations": [], "footnotes": null, "date": "December 6, 2021", "sortorder": 2 } ], "find_spot": null, "related_works": [], "former_accession_numbers": [], "did_you_know": "As a woman, Margaret Bourke-White had to fight to be allowed to photograph inside Cleveland\u2019s steel mills.", "description": "Capturing the glowing metal inside the dark steel mills posed considerable technical challenges which Bourke-White, with the help of generous colleagues, eventually overcame. It was those photographs of the steel industry that brought her national prominence. Here a single worker, set against a bank of machinery, demonstrates that manual labor was still an important part of the steel-making process in the 1920s.", "external_resources": { "wikidata": [ "https://www.wikidata.org/wiki/Q117247084" ], "internet_archive": [] }, "citations": [], "url": "https://clevelandart.org/art/2021.211", "images": {}, "alternate_images": [], "creditline": "Gift of William and Margaret Lipscomb", "image_credit": null, "sketchfab_id": null, "sketchfab_url": null, "gallery_donor_text": null, "athena_id": 449533, "creators": [ { "id": 262, "description": "Margaret Bourke-White (American, 1904\u20131971)", "extent": null, "qualifier": null, "role": "artist", "biography": "Margaret Bourke-White American, 1904-1971 Margaret Bourke-White was a preeminent photojournalist who gained fame for her striking images published in Fortune and Life magazines in the 1930s-50s. In 1922, while at Columbia University Teachers College in her native New York City, Bourke-White studied photography with Clarence White. She attended several other colleges before graduating from Cornell University (1927), then moved to Cleveland. The city's industrial landscape was influential in the development of Bourke-White's photographic style. One of her images from this period, Romance of Steel, was a first-place winner in the Cleveland Museum of Art's 1928 May Show, a regional juried exhibition. The following year Bourke-White moved back to New York to work for Henry Luce's new business magazine, Fortune. In 1934 she was sent by the magazine to cover the drought in the Midwest, an assignment she credited with awakening her social conscience. Three years later she collaborated with writer Erskine Caldwell on You Have Seen Their Faces, an acclaimed study of the plight of rural Southerners during the Great Depression. Bourke-White's long association with Life began in 1936 when she joined the magazine as one of its first staff photographers. When it premiered on November 23, 1936, her photographs of Fort Peck Dam in Montana were featured on the cover and in the lead story. During her career, Bourke-White covered many major world events: the Great Depression, World War II, the partitioning of India, and the Korean War. She continued to photograph throughout the 1950s, publishing her images in magazines and in a number of books, including Eyes on Russia (1931), North of the Danube, with Erskine Caldwell (1939), Say, Is This the U.S.A.?, with Erskine Caldwell (1941), Shooting the Russian War (1942), Dear Fatherland, Rest Quietly (1946), Halfway to Freedom: A Report on the New India (1949), and Portrait of Myself (her autobiography, 1963). M.M.", "name_in_original_language": null, "birth_year": "1904", "death_year": "1971", "use_in_caption": true, "include_extent": false, "weight": 1 } ], "legal_status": "accessioned", "accession_date": "2021-12-06T05:00:00Z", "sortable_date": 1925, "date_added_to_oa": null, "date_text": "late 1920s", "collapse_artists": false, "on_loan": false, "recently_acquired": false, "record_type": "object", "conservation_statement": null, "has_conservation_images": false, "cover_accession_number": null, "is_nazi_era_provenance": false, "impression": null, "alternate_titles": [], "is_highlight": false, "updated_at": "2026-05-01 06:54:18.262000" } }