Margaret Bourke-White - Coffee Through the Camera's Lens - 1936

Best known for her 1931 book, Eyes on Russia as well as her 1937 book, You Have Seen Their Faces (included in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook, Vol 1) Farm Security Administration photographer Margaret Bourke White published an unusual company photobook in 1936 looking at Brazilian coffee production aimed at schoolchildren.

As Parr and Badger state; "for many in the 1930s, when political dividing lines in the United States were sharply drawn, Margaret Bourke-White was something of a political conundrum, a left leaning photographer who would willingly work on lucrative commercial assignments for industry... This assignment for the American Can Company is typical, undertaken not long before she began to make the hard-hitting social documentary photographs of impoverished southern tenant farmers that would be included in her book, You Have Seen Their Faces (1937)."

"Bourke-White's photo-essay begins with a visit to the plantation in Brazil, and prompts another question regarding the Bourke-White conundrum. Brazilian coffee growers in the 1930s, (and in other decades, for that matter) were not exactly known for championing worker's rights. No doubt the plantation selected for the photographs was a 'model' one, specially turned out for the distinguished American photojournalist, but one wonders what a politicized woman like Bourke-White thought of it when carrying out this particular assignment."

"Coffee Through The Camera's Lens illustrates the Bourke-White 'conundrum': the photographer of hard-hitting social documentary such as You Have Seen Their Faces who earned far more most women in the country for doing high paying commercial and industrial work."

Included in Martin Parr and Gerry Badger, The Photobook Vol 2, page 184

Condition: very good copy of this extremely rare publication. Complete portfolio present including 12 photographs with captions, map, instruction sheet, multiple choice test, true-false test and reader reply postcard. All in perfect condition. Slight corner edgewear to the outer folder but otherwise in excellent condition. Please examine listing photos carefully.