Margaret Bourke-White 1904-1971

warm-toned, with black border, mounted to a folio sheet of Etruria laid paper folder to 4to, signed by the photographer in pencil on the mount, with 'Margaret Bourke-White, Sixty-First Floor, Chrysler Building, New York City, After November Twentieth' in letterpress inside the fold, matted, framed, 1930

Sotheby's New York, 23 April 2003, Sale 7885, Lot 61

Other prints of this image:

Maria Morris Hambourg and Christopher Phillips, The New Vision: Photography Between the World Wars, Ford Motor Company Collection (The Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1989), p. 11

Stephen Bennett Phillips, Margaret Bourke-White: The Photography of Design 1927-1936 (The Phillips Collection, 2003), p. 124, reversed

Chorus of Light: Photographs from the Sir Elton John Collection (High Museum of Art, 2000), p. 152

Bourke-White was commissioned by the Chrysler Corporation to photograph their new skyscraper in 1930, while it was still under construction.  She was much taken with the building; with its status as the tallest building in the world, and its gleaming stainless steel gargoyles, she decided it would be the perfect place for her studio.  When the building’s landlord expressed doubt about renting such prime real estate to a woman, Fortune magazine intervened on her behalf. (Silverman, For the World to See: The Life of Margaret Bourke-White, p. 52)

Later that year, Bourke-White opened her studio on the 61^st floor of the building, and the photograph offered here, on its folding letterpress mount, served as the announcement.  She remained in the Chrysler Building until early 1933.