ABSTRACT
In 1930, the American photographer Margaret Bourke-White, then aged just 26 and already famous in the United States for industrial photographs, found in Germany after being commissioned by employer, Fortune a glossy industry magazine launched the previous year to take photographs of the factories of the Ruhr Valley. Its monumental and geometric composition is reminiscent of the industrial aesthetic of Soviet photographs taken to showcase the Five-Year Plan. In 1941, Bourke-White returned one last time to the Soviet Union and managed to take a portrait of the man himself, which was reproduced on the front cover of Life magazine. A systematic perusal of the Soviet illustrated press reveals that by 1932 not one magazine or illustrated journal in Russia had alluded to or reproduced Bourke-White's photographic work, falling well short of the hopes of Skvirsky or Serebriakov. Mezhericher's position must be understood in the light of the debate on photography that was raging at the time in illustrated journals.
