Shirley Burden

• Name — Shirley Burden • Birth Name — Shirley Carter Burden • Born — December 9, 1908 • Birthplace — New York City • Died — 3 June 1989 • Place of death — Teterboro, New Jersey • Occupation — Writer, photographer • Education — Browning School • Children — Margaret Florence Shirley Carter Burden, Jr. • Parents — William Armistead Moale Burden Sr. Florence Vanderbilt Twombly • Family — Vanderbilt family

Shirley Carter Burden was born on December 9, 1908, in New York City, the younger son of William Armistead Moale Burden Sr. and Florence Vanderbilt (née Twombly) Burden. He was the brother of Ambassador William Armistead Moale Burden Jr. Their maternal grandparents were Florence Adele Vanderbilt Twombly (1854–1952) of the Vanderbilt family and Hamilton McKown Twombly (1849–1910), and the brothers were great-great-grandsons of Cornelius Vanderbilt. He was at the Browning School in New York City until 1926, but did not go on to college or university education.

Beginning in 1924, Burden assisted at Pathé News. In 1926, he and his cousin filmed an Ontario Indian tribe for their The Silent Enemy, and from 1927 held a minor position at Paramount Studios. A 1929 meeting with Edward Steichen inspired his interest in photography and later gained his mentorship. He sought better motion picture prospects in California and Hollywood and from 1929 to 1934 used his contact Merian C. Cooper to gain associate producer work, most significantly at RKO on Academy Award nominated "She".

During World War II, Burden established Tradefilms in 1942, successfully producing training films which were then in demand from the US Navy, the Office of Education, and Lockheed Aircraft. This business was unsustainable postwar and Burden and Tradefilms partner Todd Walker opened a photography studio in Beverly Hills, California, in 1946, producing advertising and architectural photography for magazines Architectural Forum, House and Garden, Arts and Architecture. He was a senior partner in William A. M. Burden & Company, a private investment firm.

Dissatisfied with commercial photography, and having embraced Roman Catholicism, Burden decided on a more fulfilling fine art career, encouraged by Minor White whom he met in 1952. The friendship developed into his patronage of White's Aperture magazine. He assisted Edward Steichen in gathering photography for, and subsequently contributing images to, MoMA's highly successful, international travelling Family of Man (1955), working on this also with Dorothea Lange whom he befriended. These contacts and experience launched a successful fine art photography career. His photo-essay on the all-but-abandoned Ellis Island, was exhibited under the auspices of the City of New York, and an invitation to exhibit his essay on the Weehawken ferry at MoMA in Diogenes With a Camera IV in 1958, curated by Steichen, who encouraged Burden to photograph Trappist monks at the abbey of Our Lady of Gethsemani, Kentucky (God Is My Life). Travel to Lourdes in 1960 resulted in Behold Thy Mother, published by Doubleday in 1965, and notoriety continued with the well publicised I Wonder Why, which documented racism experienced by a young black girl. He continued with his photo essays (on Japan, and his ancestors, the Vanderbilts) and he repaid his success by chairing or advising a range of photography organisations, and teaching (1978–81, at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California.).

In 1934, Burden married Flobelle Fairbanks, an actress and niece of actor Douglas Fairbanks Sr. Together, they were the parents of two children, a daughter and a son: • Margaret Florence (1936–2019), who married Daniel Childs. • Shirley Carter Burden Jr. (1941–1996), who was a former assistant to Senator Robert F. Kennedy, and who was married to Amanda Jay Mortimer (b. 1944) before their divorce in 1972. After the death of his first wife Flobelle on January 5, 1969, Burden married Julietta Valverde Lyon in 1971. Burden died June 3, 1989, of Lou Gehrig's disease above Teterboro Airport, on a Los Angeles to New York flight. His grandson, S. Carter Burden III, is the founder of the managed web hosting provider Logicworks. His granddaughter, Constance Childs, married celebrity chef and Food Network host David Rosengarten.

The authorities additionally record the headings Shirley C. Burden and Shirley Carter Burden. He was the child of William A. Burden I and Florence Vanderbilt Burden. He married Florence Fair. 2 children are recorded: Margaret Florence Burden and Carter Burden. Recorded as photojournalist, photographer, journalist and film producer.