Unerring Eye

PORTRAIT OF MYSELF by Margaret Bourke-White. 383 pages. Simon & Schuster. $5.95.

She barnstormed the great plains in a primitive two-seater plane to photograph the Dust Bowl. She hitchhiked by rowboat to get pictures of the Louisville flood. As the only foreign press photographer in Russia when Hitler attacked, she dodged wardens and bombers to shoot the nightly air raids on Moscow. Her ship was torpedoed out from under her in the invasion of Africa; she was among the first correspondents to photograph Buchenwald; she was the last to interview Gandhi, hours before his assassination. Thus Margaret Bourke-White followed the classic dictum of her trade, to be "in the right place at the right time." Now 57, she has put the places and the times together with some of her fine pictures in an autobiography.

Unquestionably the finest woman photographer of her time, she explored the chill patterned beauty of industrial processes for FORTUNE magazine, contributed to LIFE memorable picture essays on guerrilla warfare in Korea and the tragedy and triumph of India's bloody partition. In the '50s she faced a more personal ordeal when she found that Parkinson's disease was relentlessly robbing her of muscular control. She slowed the progress of her malady with hours of exercises each day for years; the disease has at last been brought under control by brain surgery.

Unfortunately, in telling of her crowded life, she skims from high spot to high spot with bone-jarring haste and mind-numbing cheerfulness ("Lucky me, to have had this rewarding experience . . ."). But anyone looking at the pictures will recognize that though she may fumble self-consciously with words, her eye is unerring.

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