Iron Puddler (Primary Title)
Russia (Primary Title)
Eyes on Russia (Series Title)
Margaret Bourke-White, American, 1904 – 1971 (Artist)
In 1929 the Otis Steel Company of Cleveland, Ohio, hired the young Margaret Bourke-White to produce a series of photographs of their manufacturing facilities. Bourke-White was captivated by the beauty she found in the mammoth industrial complexes. In 1930 she repeated similar themes when she became the first Westerner to photograph Soviet industry since the 1917 Russian Revolution. Iron Puddler portrays a laborer at the Red October steel mill in Stalingrad (now Volgograd, Russia), one of the most active industrial sites in the USSR. Several onlookers watch as the man poses for Bourke-White in a style reminiscent of Lewis Hine’s portraits of workmen.
Signed by the photographer in graphite below image right, on mount: "Bourke - White".
Label with letterpress title affixed to mount verso: "Iron Puddler/ from EYES ON RUSSIA /Russia, Simon & Schuster, publishers."
Annotated by the photographer in graphite below image left, on mount: "Russia".
Floyd D. and Anne C. Gottwald Fund
The Likeness of Labor, Virginia Museum of Fine Arts, October 17, 2015 - April 10, 2016
Bourke-White, Margaret. "Eyes on Russia." New York: Simon and Schuster, 1931.
©artist or artist’s estate
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