Artist Joan Liffring-Zug Bourret: Iowa Time Machine February 20, 1929

Iowa Time Machine ⏰: On February 20, 1929, pioneering Iowa documentary photographer, publisher, and civil rights activist whose images chronicled everyday Iowans Joan Liffring‑Zug Bourret was born in Iowa City.

Bourret attended the University of Iowa for three years, majoring in art and journalism with an emphasis on photography. She began working as a photographer in Iowa in 1945, starting her professional career while still in her teens. She married Arthur H. Heusinkveld in 1948 and took a position as a photographer and features writer at the Cedar Rapids Gazette. In 1951, Bourret was fired from her job at the Cedar Rapids Gazette because she was pregnant.

She responded with audacious defiance: on April 6, 1951, she became the first woman to photograph herself giving birth. The black-and-white photos, mostly shots of the doctors, nurses, and newborn Artie from her point of view on the delivery bed, were deemed "unfit to print" by many of the magazines to which she submitted them. The photos were ultimately published in the Des Moines Register, the Minneapolis Tribune, and Look magazine, which had a circulation of more than 3 million at the time. That act of rebellion launched her freelance career and established her willingness to challenge social boundaries through photography.

Bourret's legacy extends far beyond any single image or project. She contributed more than 500,000 negatives from the 1940s to 2007 to the archives of the State Historical Society of Iowa, creating an unparalleled visual record of Iowa life across six decades. Her photographs documented the Black civil rights movement in Cedar Rapids during the 1960s, which was instrumental in the election of one of the first African Americansto the Iowa House of Representatives, Cecil Reed. Her images include studies of ethnic groups, including Norwegians, Swedes, Czechs, Amish, Dutch, Meskwaki, Hispanic workers, and the Amana people. In 1979, she founded Penfield Books, which went on to publish more than 110 titles focused on ethnic culture and Iowa history. #Iowa #OTD #History #Photography #Art