At the Time of the Louisville Flood

1937 photograph by Margaret Bourke-White From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

At the Time of the Louisville Flood, also known as World's Highest Standard of Living, is a black-and-white photograph taken in early 1937 by photojournalist Margaret Bourke-White while on assignment for Life. The photo shows Black flood refugees waiting in line for Red Cross relief in the aftermath of the Ohio River flood of 1937 in Louisville. Behind the refugees, a billboard advertisement for the National Association of Manufacturers appears in the background reading, "World's Highest Standard of Living: There's No Way Like the American Way".

Black and white photo of black men, women, and children standing in a breadline for refugees from the 1937 Louisville flood
At the Time of the Louisville Flood (1937)

It is one of several photos of the Red Cross relief line taken from different angles and one of more than 20 flood-related images Bourke-White produced in the series, only eight of which were originally published in two issues of Life in February of that year. The photo is often recontextualized and used as a symbol of the Great Depression even though it was intended to document the Louisville flood; the photo lacks visual cues about its location and subject, and awareness of its context was lost over time. It is among Bourke-White's most well-known photographs.

Digital and print selections from the series are currently held in several archival collections, including the Life Picture Collection, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, the New Orleans Museum of Art, and the International Center of Photography, among others. An additional set of photos documenting Bourke-White's work on the series from the perspective of Louisville photographer Corwin Short are held by the University of Louisville.

Description

The image depicts the aftermath of the 1937 Ohio River flood in Kentucky, showing residents from Black neighborhoods in Louisville,[a] including men, women, and children. They wait in line with baskets and pails to receive water, food, and medicine from a Red Cross relief station[2] near 13th and Broadway in the California neighborhood.[3] Behind the queue, a billboard featuring an advertisement from the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM) is visible.[4] It depicts a seemingly happy white middle-class family driving through the countryside. The words "World's Highest Standard of Living" appear across the top of the billboard, while smaller text below reads, "There's No Way Like the American Way!" Of the 18 people depicted in the frame waiting for flood relief, only one appears to be looking at the billboard.[5]

Background

Margaret Bourke-White grew up in a family where her father was an amateur photographer. As a child, she helped him develop photographs, but did not seriously immerse herself in photography until she studied with Clarence White, a founding member of the Photo-Secession movement that promoted photography as fine art.[6] In 1927, she started a commercial photography business in Cleveland producing architectural and industrial photography for corporate clients.[7] The next year, she made a name for herself at the age of 24 with industrial images for the Otis Steel Company.[8]

Black and white photo of hydroelectric generators at Niagara Falls
Niagara Falls Power, Cleveland (1928)

Her commercial work got her noticed by American magazine magnate Henry Luce, who recruited her as a photojournalist to the new Fortune magazine, where her interest in documentary photography slowly grew in her new role.[8] At Fortune, she became the first foreign photographer granted official access to document industrial sites in the Soviet Union during the first five-year plan.[9] She visited the country three times on assignment to cover its growing industrialization.[10] During those trips, she photographed workers and peasants alongside the Russian infrastructure.[11]

While her initial interest in documentary photography emerged during her first visit to Russia, the documentary aesthetic of Fortune magazine also played a role.[12] In the summer of 1934, she was on assignment for the magazine, covering the major drought impacting the United States at the time.[12] She produced a photo-essay on the Dust Bowl,[b] focusing on people as subjects rather than industry. This experience changed her approach to photography,[14] In her autobiography, she recalled the emergence of this new "awareness":[15]

I had never seen people caught helpless like this in total tragedy. They had no defense. They had no plan. [...] I was deeply moved by the suffering I saw and touched particularly by the bewilderment of the farmers.[16] I think this was the beginning of my awareness of people in a human, sympathetic sense as subject for the camera and photographed against a wider canvas than I had perceived before. During the rapturous period when I was discovering the beauty of industrial shapes, people were only incidental to me, and in retrospect I had not much feeling for them in my earlier work. But suddenly it was the people who counted.[17]

Bourke-White began a collaboration with Erskine Caldwell in early 1936 on a project that became You Have Seen Their Faces.[18] She was hired as the first woman photojournalist and staff photographer for the newly formed Life magazine later that year,[19] joining Alfred Eisenstaedt, Peter Stackpole, and Thomas McAvoy.[20] Her photo of Fort Peck Dam appeared on the cover of the first issue.[19]

Ohio River flood of 1937

Main article: Ohio River flood of 1937

The Ohio River flooded in late January 1937 after heavy rain earlier in the month, causing damage along the river and smaller tributaries. Temperatures were cold enough that ice was reported floating along northern portions of the river.[21] Five states were impacted: West Virginia, Ohio, Indiana, Illinois, and Kentucky, with a total of one million left homeless by the flooding.[22]

Black and white photo of floodwaters covering streets and buildings in Louisville, Kentucky, during the 1937 Ohio River flood
Rising floodwaters on January 25, 1937 (NARA)

The flood destroyed more than half of the city of Louisville, Kentucky, putting seventy percent of the city under water and forcing 175,000 residents out of their homes.[23] Floodwaters reached depths of 10 feet (3.05 m) in the West End and downtown.[24] The flood contributed to the demise of the neighborhoods of Shippingport and The Point.[25]

Flood damage was estimated at $250 million ($5.6 billion in 2025). According to the American Red Cross, it was the greatest natural disaster in the organization's history up to that point. The National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) contacted the United States Coast Guard for help, with reports that Black residents were facing discrimination when it came to flood rescues.[26]

On assignment

The Ohio River flood was still breaking news when Bourke-White finished up covering the second inauguration of Franklin D. Roosevelt in Washington, D.C. Life editor Shaw Billings gave Bourke-White an hour to figure out how to get down to Louisville and cover the story. She boarded the final flight and landed at Bowman Field airport in Louisville just before the airfield was submerged some time after January 20. Upon her arrival, she was met by Kentucky native, realtor, and photographer Corwin Short,[3] who was directed by then-mayor of Louisville Neville Miller to guide Bourke-White throughout the flooded city.[27]

They hitchhiked by raft into town, taking several photos along the way.[28] Later, in 1963, Bourke-White recalled: "I thumbed rides in rowboats and once on a large raft. These makeshift craft were bringing food packages and bottles of clean drinking water to marooned families and seeking out survivors. Working from the rowboats gave me good opportunities to record acts of mercy as they occurred."[29]

Black and white photo of Louisville Central Station in Kentucky partially surrounded by floodwaters during the 1937 Ohio River flood
Louisville Central Station surrounded by flood water (Caufield & Shook)

Short captured more than 100 photos of the flood,[30] some featuring Bourke-White at work on her assignment.[27] In one photo, Bourke-White and her camera and tripod are poised on the roof of a car amidst the flood below. Other photos in Short's series show Bourke-White walking along a pontoon bridge and as a passenger in a rowboat.[31]

The offices of The Courier Journal and The Louisville Times at the Old U.S. Customshouse and Post Office building in downtown Louisville became a base of operations for the press, with Bourke-White documenting their efforts to cover the flood, as well as using the offices as a place to sleep.[29] Three of the photos in her series document the newspaper staff,[32] including a group photo showing them working on the latest newspaper edition by the light of kerosene lamps due to the power outage.[33] Two other photos depict editor Tom Wallace and news editor Wilbur B. Cogshall.[32]

Many churches were converted into food distribution and relief centers, often because they were built on higher ground.[34] During her tour of the flood, Bourke-White captured a photo of St. Paul's Episcopal Church, where the pews were used to store canned food that was distributed by the Red Cross.[34] At Churchill Downs, Bourke-White took a photo of the flooded racetrack. Inside the clubhouse, she captured a famous image of Jim Lawhorn, an elderly Black man in his 90s.[34] The photo of Lawhorn, a former slave turned flood refugee,[35] made an impression with the public.[36] In Buechel, Bourke-White visited a relief station at Hikes Grade School, where she photographed a nurse getting ready to inoculate flood refugees against typhoid.[37]

Original publication

Black and white photo of a street scene in Birmingham, Alabama, showing a National Association of Manufacturers billboard reading "World's Highest Standard of Living"
World's Highest Standard of Living (Arthur Rothstein, February 1937), Birmingham, Alabama.

The first photos and coverage of the Ohio River flood published by Life[c] appeared in the February 1, 1937, edition,[38] but Bourke-White was not the photographer, as she was still on assignment at the inauguration of FDR in Washington, with one of her photos of the event in the same edition.[29] Her flood photos were first published in the February 8 issue, beginning with the photo "Baby in Shelter During Flood, Louisville, Kentucky," which appeared prominently in the lead position of the story "Faces in the Flood."[39]

At the Time of the Louisville Flood[40] was first published in the February 15 issue on page nine, two weeks after Life had begun its coverage of the flood. It appeared as the lead photograph in a seven-photo feature for a photo-essay titled "Floods Aftermath", with the headline, "The flood leaves its victims on the bread line".[2] The essay continued across two additional pages of photos showing flood victims.[41] In that same issue, 15 photos by Bourke-White[42] appeared in a separate story about the Supreme Court of the United States.[43]

Reception

Readers of Life magazine reacted positively to Bourke-White's coverage of the Louisville flood. Photographer Louis Clyde Stoumen, then a college student at Lehigh University, wrote a letter to the editor praising At the Time of the Louisville Flood, calling Bourke-White "truly great" and applauding the magazine for its "editorial courage" in publishing the photo.[44] Another letter to the editor came from Walter White of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People, who congratulated the magazine on its "fair pictorial representation" of Black Americans in its story about the flood victims.[45] American studies scholar John Raeburn later described At the Time of the Louisville Flood as one of the "strongest" photos of Bourke-White's career.[46] Photography professor Mark Durden called the photo "brilliant and succinct", arguing that it represents Bourke-White's departure from the world of commercial photography toward a documentary style rooted in what he describes as the "truth and honesty" of human experience.[47]

Analysis

National Association of Manufacturers

Black and white photo of a billboard reading "World's Shortest Working Hours" on U.S. Highway 99 in California"
World's Shortest Working Hours (Dorothea Lange, March 1937), U.S. Highway 99, California.

The billboard featured in the photo originated in a campaign by the National Association of Manufacturers (NAM),[48] a pro-business trade association founded in 1895. NAM took a market fundamentalism position while representing the interests of American companies. They opposed unions, federal taxes, and government regulations, including restrictions on child labor[d] in the early 20th century.[49]

Beginning in 1935, NAM came out in opposition to the New Deal, with The Business Week announcing that NAM had declared "war"[e] on the administration of President Franklin D. Roosevelt.[51] They began their campaign the next year,[f] taking out newspaper advertisements arguing against the program. The group was supported in their opposition by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the American Liberty League, and a number of media outlets. Their campaign coincided with the 1936 United States presidential election, which Roosevelt won in a landslide victory, despite NAM's efforts.[52]

After the election, NAM took a step back with a conciliatory tone, expressing their intent to work with the new administration, but at the same time, they expanded their public relations budget from $36,500 ($846,853 in 2025) to $793,043 ($18.4 million in 2025)—an almost 22-fold increase. By 1938, it was estimated that NAM had used this money to fund the placement of 60,000 billboards and the creation of news dispatches, radio programs, a film, and educational materials intended for libraries.[53] In the original article featuring Bourke-White's photo,[2] Life magazine referred to NAM's billboard as part of a "propaganda campaign".[48] Roosevelt's Farm Security Administration (FSA) documented the billboards around the country, with photos taken by Edwin Locke, Dorothea Lange, Russell Lee, Arthur Rothstein, and John Vachon.[54] Even though Bourke-White was not part of FSA, American Studies scholar James Guimond described her photo as "the most famous picture of the NAM billboards".[48]

Black and white photo of a billboard reading "World's Highest Wages" on U.S. Highway 99 in California"
World's Highest Wages (Dorothea Lange, March 1937), U.S. Highway 99, California.

Framing and composition

Design theorist Clive Dilnot argues that the framing and composition of the photo are simple yet deliberate in their contrasts of "black/white, rich/poor, reality/illusion". There are multiple levels of interpretation here, writes Dilnot. For one, there is the very real, documentary aspect of the photo, the reality of the event itself. On the other hand, there is the contrast between what the poster on the NAM billboard is communicating to the viewer and the contradiction represented by the breadline. According to Dilnot, this contrast alters the viewer's reference point from the flood and its relief efforts to the economic concerns of the Great Depression and the divisions between blacks and whites and between "wealth and poverty" that it reveals. The photo serves to remind the viewer, writes Dilnot, that the racial divide is also an economic one.[5]

Philosopher Barbara E. Savedoff explores the same ideas as Dilnot noting that "Bourke-White exposes the gap between propaganda and reality, between black and white, between those who enjoy the 'world's highest standard of living,' and the vulnerability of those suffering in need."[55] Savedoff also emphasizes the documentary nature of the image; Bourke-White captured this scene as the line of people passed in front of the billboard.[g] It is real, as it was neither constructed nor artificial. She wonders if the image will have the same impact in the future, as the rise of computer-based tools alters the assumptions and expectations of the audience. Savedoff poses the question: "[As] we become accustomed to seamless assemblages and montages, might we become less able to appreciate the profundity, the powerful testimony, of the straight image?"[56]

Breadline

Literary critic Donald Pizer explores the history of the breadline depicted in At the Time of the Louisville Flood.[57] The photo was first published by Life in an article with the title "The flood leaves its victims on the bread line".[58] Pizer notes that the image of the breadline in America has a longer history, first arising after the Panic of 1893 towards the end of the Gilded Age, but acquiring an association with the Great Depression many decades later. Americans waiting in breadlines at Depression-era soup kitchens became one of the defining images of the 1930s.[59]

Black and white photo of a breadline outside a soup kitchen in Chicago. A sign reads "Free Soup Coffee & Doughnuts for the Unemployed."
Unemployed men queued outside a depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago by Al Capone, 1931 (unknown)

The image appeared everywhere in the media at the time, but usually anonymously, with no photo credit attached. Some photographers like Edward Steichen (Breadline on Sixth Avenue, c. 1930) and Dorothea Lange (White Angel Bread Line, 1933) received credit and became known for their breadline photos. Pizer argues that Bourke-White's depiction of the breadline follows in the longer tradition of its use as an "American icon of poverty", but differs from its original meaning in the 1890s, when it was largely seen as a form of class conflict. Here, Pizer writes, Bourke-White's breadline becomes a symbol of "social disparity" in terms of "racial dimensions".[60]

Recontextualization

Art historian Theodore M. Brown describes how the photo of At the Time of the Louisville Flood was recontextualized over time.[h] Brown acknowledges that the photo depicts members of a lower income Black neighborhood in Louisville that was hit hard by the floods, but also points out that it does not show "unemployment or welfare, or the kind of chronic poverty" that was documented by the government during the Great Depression or by Bourke-White in the Southern United States. In spite of these differences, the photo instead, writes Brown, is "used repeatedly to comment on inequality, poverty and deprivation".[1] Brown refers to the image as "probably her most famous individual photograph".[61]

Art historian John A. Walker explored Brown's idea of recontextualization, arguing that the photo took on additional interpretations and meaning once it was removed from the original context of the Life magazine article about the flood. "Since the photograph itself makes no reference to a flood or to Louisville", writes Walker, "only those featured in the photograph, or who helped to produce it, or who read the article in Life would be aware of its specific spatio-temporal point of origin."[64]

Series

There are more than 20 known photos in Bourke-White's Louisville Flood series. Of the entire series, only eight photos were originally published by Life in 1937, with approximately 15 or more left unpublished. Additional photos taken by Corwin Short of Bourke-White in the field during her original assignment for Life were first exhibited in 1987 and donated to the University of Louisville in 2002.[3]

Red Cross relief station sub-series

At the Time of the Louisville Flood is part of a sub-series within the larger Louisville flood series consisting of at least four known photos of the same scene from different angles and perspectives. This sub-series includes At the Time of the Louisville Flood,[2] Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville,[65] Untitled (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville),[66] and Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y.[67] At the Time of the Louisville Flood is the only published image in the sub-series.[2]

Two of the unpublished photos in the series reveal the line of people receding towards the back into the distance down the street, while the other two do not, constraining the frame to show either 18 (At the Time of the Louisville Flood)[2] or 21 people waiting in line (Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y.). Bourke-White's reframing of the shot in the other two images (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville I and II) shows the line of people becoming much longer in both directions, expanding towards the right foreground of the frame where it disappears inside a building that houses the relief center, and also into the far distance to the left in the background, showing that the line of people disappears around and down the corner of the street, visibly emerging after some distance as the winding line of people appears in the frame once again off to the side in the background. Curator Brian Piper of the New Orleans Museum of Art notes that unlike the original published version, more information is provided about the famous scene with this additional image, as, according to Piper, the "camera's vantage in this version [Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville] gives a sense of perspective and lets us know just how long the queue of displaced people extended down the street."[68]

A fourth photo in the sub-series, Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station, Louisville, K. Y., is taken towards the line of people from the side instead of away from it, and from a lower angle.[69]

The following is a list of known published and unpublished works in the series. The unpublished list remains incomplete. A dagger (†) indicates a photo is part of the Red Cross relief station sub-series. Grayed out text indicates an unknown photo in the series that is assumed to exist. Titles are either based on editorial captions or given to the images by curators as noted. If no caption or curatorial title exists, a brief description appears in its place.

Published
  1. Baby in Shelter During Flood, Louisville, Kentucky (Life, February 8) Johnson Museum print[70]ICP print[71]
  2. At the Time of the Louisville Flood (Life, February 15)†[72]
  3. Untitled (Staffs of the Louisville Courier-Journal and Times) (Life, February 15)[73] ICP print[74]
  4. Untitled (Tom Wallace) (Life, February 15)[32]
  5. Untitled (Wilbur Cogshall) (Life, February 15)[75] ICP print[76]
  6. Untitled (St. Paul's Episcopal Church) (Life, February 15)[77]
  7. Untitled (Jim Lawhorn) (Life, February 15)[35]
  8. Untitled (Women and Babies at Churchill Downs) (Life, February 15)[34] ICP print[78]
Unpublished
  1. Untitled (Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville)[i] (Unpub.)†[66]
  2. Fresh Water Line, Flood Victims, Louisville (Unpub.)†[79]
  3. Untitled (Louisville Flood Red Cross Relief Station)[j] (Unpub.)†[67]
  4. Untitled (No Food Will Be Served Unless You Have A Food Check) (Unpub.)[81]
  5. Untitled (Twenty Grand Cigarettes) (Unpub.)[82]
  6. Untitled (Louisville, Kentucky, at the time of the Great Ohio River Flood) (Unpub.)[83]
  7. Untitled (Clara Stull) (Unpub.)[84] ICP print[37]
  8. Untitled (Ohio River Flood) (Unpub.)[85]
  9. Untitled (Churchill Downs) (Unpub.)[86]ICP print[87]
  10. Untitled (Homeless in Louisville) (Unpub.)[88]
  11. Untitled (The Great Ohio River Flood) (Unpub.)[89]
  12. Untitled (Unknown) (Unpub.)[90]
  13. Untitled (Flood Victim in a Makeshift Boat) (Unpub.)[91]
  14. Untitled (Men in a Boat) (Unpub.)[92]
  15. Untitled (Reflection of Man in Boat in Window) (Unpub.)[93]

Selected exhibitions

The photo was exhibited by the Museum of Modern Art a little over a month after it was first published by Life magazine. It appeared at the Photography 1839–1937 exhibition from March 17 to April 18, 1937, where it was shown as The Flood Leaves Its Victims on the Bread Line, the original title of the photo-essay. In the exhibition, the image appeared alongside four other photos by Bourke-White,[k] including Chrysler Factory, Iron Puddler, U.S.S.R., Construction on Wind Tunnel, Fort Peck, Montana, and Woman Who Wept for Joy, Textile Factory, U.S.S.R.[94]

One of the earliest uses of the title At the Time of the Louisville Flood was in the Photography in the Twentieth Century exhibition at the National Gallery of Canada in 1967.[95] The new title gained currency[l] in subsequent exhibitions at the Baltimore Museum of Art (1969)[96] and the Museum of Modern Art (1971).[97]

The exhibition LIFE Magazine and the Power of Photography (2020), organized by the Princeton University Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, displayed the photograph in an installation named "Frame after Frame". It was presented along with digital negatives from the series on a tablet to show how Bourke-White prepared for the photograph by "capturing images from different vantage points".[98]

Notes and references

Sources

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