Some personalities of the 20th century were - and remain - so recognizable that literally billions of people around the world such as Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (1869-1948). Albert Einstein, JFK, Martin Luther King, Jr. - There is a sort of evocative power of the most famous paintings of these men who immediately calls to mind not only the time in which they live, but the words and deeds that made them so memorable. Gandhi is perfectly suited to this group of iconic figures, and no individual image has become more closely linked with their life and their way of life, than the portrait 1946 from Margaret Bourke-White of the pioneers of civil disobedience next to his prized Distaff.
Bourke-White was, of course, one of the most intrepid chroniclers of the century of wars and conflicts: your photos from Buchenwald in 1945, for example, and of the terrible violence that attended the India 1947 partition and the creation of Pakistan are among the most powerful of his extraordinary career. But was also capable of sensitive to documenting the silent - and, in many cases, the representative - moments of the life of the great and the powerless, alike. Incredibly, however, his now-famous image of Gandhi does not appear in the article in life magazine for which it was originally shot.
In 1946, during the period prior to the partition of 1947 historical - and the independence from Great Britain to the India and Pakistan - Bourke-White spent time in India working on a feature, in the final analysis, titled "Leaders of la India", which would operate in the edition of May 27, 1946, of life. (See at the end of this gallery to see article, page margins, as it appeared in the magazine). He made hundreds of photographs, including many of the same Gandhi: his family; at her spinning-wheel; in the sentence. More than one dozen of pictures running in the "Leaders" article in the may issue of 46. Only two were of Gandhi, and none of them was the well-known picture of the spinning wheel.
"At the age of 76," life wrote, "Mohandas Gandhi has embarked on a new career as a doctor. It is characteristic of the Mahatma who, at this time when their permanent quest for a free India seems to have reached its final crisis, takes time out of a busy political life to preach a nature cure. Gandhi has license to practice, of course, but to ask the Mahatma would be such a document as requiring President Truman to produce your ticket when it goes up to [the first presidential airplane, nicknamed] Holy cow. "
It should be noted, however, that life does not entirely forgot about Bourke-White photo once it was published for the first time. From the beginning of February 1948, photography was given pride of place in a multiple page tribute to Gandhi published immediately after his assassination. Fill half a page in the article, 'India loses its 'great soul',' the image serves as a eulogy visual agitation for man and his ideals.
In typed notes that accompanied the Bourke-White film when he was sent from the India offices of New York life in the spring of 1946, the importance of the simple spinning wheel in the picture is very clear:
[Gandhi] rotates each day during 1 hr usually starts at 4. All the members of his ashram should turn. He and his followers encouraged everyone to turn. Even M. B-W dared to lay down [] to rotate the camera... When I photograph and spinning were crafts, I said seriously, "the largest of the 2 spins." Spinning is elevated to heights almost a religion with Gandhi and his followers. The spinning wheel is a kind of an Ikon with them. Spinning is one cure all and spoken of in terms of high poetry.
The most famous Bourke-White portrait made of Gandhi, meanwhile, note the editors of life simply says: "reading clippings Gh. [a common abbreviation for Gandhi in the notes] - spinning wheel in the foreground, which just finished using." It would be impossible to exaggerate the reverence in which Gh 'personal own spinning wheel' is carried out at the ashram. "
Here, on the anniversary of the assassination of Gandhi - they shot him dead (January 30, 1948) by a hindu nationalist Nathuram Godse who felt that he was the Apostle of non-violence, in some way, catering to Muslims in India - life returns to publish great portrait of Bourke-White, as well as other images of the same allocation Gandhi called. We have also included the lists of pages of the article "The Indian leaders" that ran in May 1946.
A final note: as many photographers, Bourke-White was not above time when itself allowing the freedom of a playful self-portrait. Here it is, then - legendary photojournalist in India, posing with a loom of his own.
Margaret Bourke-White - time & life Pictures/Getty Images-Ben Cosgrove is the Editor of LIFE.com
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