GUEST: This is a photograph that was given to my aunt right at the end of the Second World War by Margaret Bourke-White. They met each other in, in Europe. My aunt was working with the displaced persons at the end of the war-- in fact, my aunt was very senior in the administration-- and many millions of people they had to relocate back to homes that were thousands of miles, I guess, from, from where they'd been forced to flee from.
APPRAISER: So, what part of Europe did your aunt work in?
GUEST: She talked about France and Germany. I think most of the time, she was in Germany.
APPRAISER: Well, your aunt sounds like a remarkable woman, and Margaret Bourke-White was a remarkable woman, as well. She was a woman of many firsts. She was the first woman photographer to be hired by Henry Luce for "Fortune" magazine.
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: She was the first American photojournalist to go to Russia, in 1930. She was the first photographer to have a cover image on "Life" magazine, in 1936.
GUEST: Ah.
APPRAISER: And during the Second World War, she was the first woman combat photographer. But if we go back and look at this picture, what you have is a picture of the George Washington Bridge during construction...
GUEST: Okay.
APPRAISER: That she did as part of a photo essay for "Fortune" magazine, which was the first American magazine to really focus on the industrial landscape, the corporate landscape. And what Margaret Bourke-White brought to her images was a very sophisticated sensibility that drew on a Modernist aesthetic, an artistic aesthetic, but also an appreciation for the machine, for the industrial age. You have a vintage photograph, which, of course, is the preferred photograph, was done in 1933. And if we look at the edges, we see that they have this black border.
GUEST: Oh.
APPRAISER: This is characteristic of what Bourke-White elected in her exhibition prints. The picture is, of course, mounted, and she has her penciled signature, which indicates it is a final print, an exhibition print. At auction, an estimate would be $20,000 to $30,000.
GUEST: Wow.
APPRAISER: It's probably one of Margaret Bourke-White's ten best photographs.
GUEST: Really?
APPRAISER: Thank you so much for bringing it in.
GUEST: Wow, that's... that's amazing. I wouldn't have had any idea that it was worth that.
APPRAISER: When you walked in, the blood started coursing through my veins.
GUEST (chuckling): I saw that-- I saw that.
