LIFE Magazine's Classic Photos

The Mahatma, 1946
By Margaret Bourke-White
"I feel that utter truth is essential," Margaret Bourke-White once said of photography, "and to get that truth may take a lot of searching and long hours." This approach to the craft is, it can be said, Gandhi-esque, so perhaps it is fitting that the Mahatma, who spent many long hours searching for answers, was one of her regular subjects in the 1940s. Here, the great man of peace is at his spinning wheel in Poona, India.

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