Books: Soviets by Camera

EYES ON RUSSIA—Margaret Bourke-White—Simon & Schuster ($5).

In 1930 Miss Bourke-White, expert camerawoman traveling free-lance with Governmental blessing, took 800 photographs in Soviet Russia. Artistically in love with her work, she took great pains, gave none. Happy posers said "Thank you" when her shutter clicked; one woman even wept for joy. The Russians "consider the artist an important factor in the Five-Year Plan, and the photographer the artist of the Machine Age." They appreciated Bourke-White. Starting as their photographer she soon became their comrade.

In Eyes on Russia, 32 selected pictures are accompanied by running comments from under the black cloth. Sprightly travelog, philosophy, technique, anecdotes focus the view through the ground glass. In front of Bourke-White's sympathetic but anastigmatic eye files the Five-Year cake-walk—agricultural, industrial, probably unworkable. The spirit of the proletariat was irresistible; but industrial idealism, sauced with scarce goods and inefficient service, she found hard to swallow whole. Living on cold canned beans, on "hard" trains that gave her few transports, she loved the Great Experiment with a grain of salt.

The photographs range from one-man shots to the greatest dam in the world. The selection includes not too many machines, almost enough men. Her pictures confirm the conviction that photography is an art, that she is a photographer of the first hypo.

The Author. Margaret Bourke-White was graduated from Cornell in 1927, went home to Cleveland where she became a professional photographer when she found her hobby paid. Otis Steel Co. gave her her first big job., which she did so well that Cleveland's Van Sweringen brothers engaged her to take pictures of their Terminal Tower project. Then FORTUNE sought her, brought her to Manhattan. Now at 26, her income is $50,000 a year. Nervy, she has gone where her eye led her never takes no for an answer. She has shot pictures in Canadian lumber camps at 27° below Zero, on the spire of Manhattan's Chrysler Building, where it took three men to steady the tripod. Her 1930 New York business announcement, an ascending view of the Chrysler spire taken from atop the scaffolding, made recipients gasp. In her recent five weeks in Russia she had five proposals of marriage. She uses an Ansco "view-type" camera (but always carries a Graflex, too); develops her plates herself.