Customer Reviews

Portrait of Myself

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Margaret Bourke-White is a true American original. This book is well-written and inspiring. Not only did Bourke-White capture life through her photographs - she lived it to the fullest. This would be a great gift for any independent woman you know.

I bought this book because I had to do a presentation about her..Mind u I hate reading, but this book was great. She was a remarkable woman!!!

Portrait of Myself, Margaret Bourke-White [1904-71]; Simon & Schuster (1963)


"There is something appalling in the egocentricity of artists."

From the Introduction of "The Mind of Napoleon," J. C. Herold (1955)


Please read The Women Who Wrote The War, by Nancy Caldwell Sorel (1999), a five-star masterpiece which led me to "Portrait of Myself." Then come back to this page.

* * *

"Portrait" is a tragic book, depressing to read - despite the benefit of being reminded of MBW's personal courage & her stellar & oft-unrivalled achievements in photography & magazine journalism.

When MBW wrote about the extraordinary experiences that liberated her from the impenetrable prison of her steamroller egotism - WWII, India, the Korean war (1950- 53) & her struggle with Parkinson's disease (late 1950s?) - her writing is fluid & even occasionally creative & eloquent. But before & after these chapters, here's why hard-core egotists should be strictly prohibited from writing memoirs.

From a single (!) page:

"I... I've... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I..."

(From "A Broken Ring & A Cracked Lens," p. 32).

The above is mild compared to the self-indulgence below (again, found on a single page):

"I... me... I... I... me... my... I... I... I... me... me... my... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... my... I... I... I... I... I... I... I... my... I... myself... I'm... I... I... my... me... I... I... I... I..."

(From "The Lecture Circuit," p. 190).

And then came the relapse after her splendid, passionate writing about her experiences in World War II (1939-45) & then in India (culminating with the assassination of Gandhi, on January 30, 1948):

"Me... me... I... I... I... I... my... I... I... I... I... I... my... I... I... I... I... I... my... I... me... I... we [editorial oversight?!?!]... I... I... my... I... I... I... my... I... I... I... I... I..."

(p. 301, "On A Rocky Connecticut Hill.")

Needless to say, this is excruciating to read. Why this did not occur to the unnamed & unacknowledged editor of "Portrait" is a glaringly obvious question (let's leave it at that).

The further absence of an index & the author's complete indifference in all but a few instances to chronology - all of this points to "Portrait" having been a self-indulgent cashing in on MBW's celebrity, rather than a good-faith exercise in legitimate publishing.

Post Note: Unfortunately, the idea came to me only after posting the review for the first time (this is the second post) that her egotism (organic & irreproachable; similar to that exhibited by Napoleon, 1769-1821) was, in a sense, a preview of her later physical affliction.

Unadulterated egotism imprisons the routinely thoughtless in a world of their own tragic misconceptions; Parkinson's (defined by one of Bourke-White's colleagues): "A terrible disease...you [physically] grow stiffer...each year until you are a walking prison."