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Men at "antipass" protest, near Johannesburg, 1950 Margaret Bourke-White/Time-Life/Getty Images

Interchange – Focus on Apartheid: The Photojournalism of Margaret Bourke-White

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Modern Mechanix, March 1937
Modern Mechanix, March 1937

As a photographer for Life and Fortune magazines, Margaret Bourke-White traveled to Russia in the 1930s, photographed the Nazi takeover of Czechoslovakia in 1938, recorded the liberation of Buchenwald a the end of World War II, and documented “Calcutta streets strewn with putrefying corpses decaying in the heat and being consumed by bloated vultures” in the aftermath of the 1946 Muslim-Hindi communal riots. In 1949, Life sent her to South Africa to take photographs in a country that was becoming racially polarized by white minority rule. Life published two photo essays highlighting Bourke-White’s photographs, but much of her South African work remained unpublished…until tonight’s guest got his hands on it…

dawn of apartheid book coverGUEST
Alex Lichtenstein is an associate professor in the Department of History at Indiana University. His work centers on the intersection of labor history and the struggle for racial justice in societies shaped by white supremacy, particularly the U.S. South (1865-1954) and 20th-century South Africa. He is the author of Twice the Work of Free Labor: The Political Economy of Convict Labor in the New South, and along with Rick Halpern, of Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid (Indiana University Press).

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Photos in Black and White: Margaret Bourke-White and the Dawn of Apartheid in South Africa
Portrait of Myself

MUSIC
Intro: Kyle Shepherd Trio, “Dream State”
Break One: The Mgababa Queens, “Maphuthi”
Break Two: Kwela Tebza, “Kwela Roots”
Outro: Winston “Mankunku” Ngozi, “Yakhal’ Inkomo”

CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Assistant Producer: Rob Schoon
Board Engineer: Jennifer Brooks
Executive Producer: Joe Crawford

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