Bourke-White, Margaret. Newsprint. A Book of Pictures Illustrating the Operations in the Manufacture of Paper on Which to Print the World's News.

Montreal: International Paper Sales Co., 1939. Pictorial cloth. Small folio. Custom made polyester jacket. Photos in luscious gravure principally by Bourke-White (not individually identified). Near very good with a little wear to extremities and light foxing on front end papers and first few pages. A scarce and virtually unknown Bourke-White title which sold for $300 at Swann auction #2045, May 26, 2005, at the top of the $200-300 estimate. Summary:

Newsprint: A Book of Pictures Illustrating the Operations in the Manufacture of Paper on Which to Print the World's News is a photobook published by the International Paper Sales Company in Montreal. The volume provides a visual chronicle of industrial papermaking, tracing the complete lifecycle of newsprint production.

Overview & Highlights

• Industrial Scope: Documents the step-by-step manufacturing process, beginning with lumberjacks felling timber and driving logs downriver, moving through the pulverizing and chemical treatment of pulp, and ending with giant rolls of newsprint prepared for global shipment.

• Visual Style: Features gravure reproductions of photographs primarily taken by Margaret Bourke-White (originating from a major LIFE magazine photo-essay at International Paper mills).

• Aesthetic Focus: Highlights Bourke-White’s characteristic focus on modern machinery, immense physical scale, structural patterns, and human labor within heavy industry.

Margaret Bourke-White (1904–1971) was an American photographer and photojournalist who broke numerous barriers as a woman in 20th-century media. Beginning her career in the late 1920s as an industrial photographer in Cleveland, her dynamic compositions of steel mills and modern architecture quickly earned her acclaim. She became the first staff photographer hired for Fortune magazine in 1929 and, in 1936, shot the cover photo for the inaugural issue of LIFE magazine. Over her trailblazing career, Bourke-White served as the first foreign photographer permitted to photograph Soviet industry, the first female war correspondent accredited by the U.S. armed forces during World War II, and a chronicler of major global events, including the liberation of the Buchenwald concentration camp and the partition of India. Known for her fearless determination and empathetic eye, her visual reporting helped establish photojournalism as a major cultural force until Parkinson's disease forced her retirement in the late 1950s.