Joe Rosenthal
Joe Rosenthal (October 9 1911 – August 20 2006) was an American photographer who received the Pulitzer Prize for his iconic World War II portrait of American troops raising the flag on Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima.
Rosenthal was born in Washington, D.C.. His interest in photography started as a hobby in San Francisco, California, during the Great Depression, where he lived with a brother while looking for work. He became a reporter-photographer for the San Francisco News in 1932.
Rejected by the army as a photographer because of poor eyesight, Rosenthal joined the Associated Press (AP) and followed the Marines in the Pacific Theater of Operations during the war. His picture of five marines and a navy corpsman raising the flag on Mount Suribachi (Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima) on February 23 1945 became one of the best-known photographs of the war.
Rosenthal left the AP later in 1945 and joined the San Francisco Chronicle. He worked there as a photographer for 35 years before retiring in 1981.
Rosenthal was extensively interviewed after September 11, 2001, when Thomas E. Franklin shot a similar iconic photograph, Ground Zero Spirit, depiciting the raising of the flag by three firefighters at the World Trade Center. Rosenthal and Franklin met several times after the event.
At age 94, Rosenthal died of natural causes in a center for assisted living in Novato, a suburb of San Francisco.[1] [1]
The flag-raising photo
On Feb. 23, 1945, four days after D-Day at Iwo Jima, Rosenthal was making his daily visit to the island on a Marine landing craft when he heard that a flag was being raised atop Mount Suribachi, a volcano at the southern tip of the island.
Upon landing, Rosenthal hurried toward Suribachi, lugging along his bulky Speed Graphic camera, the standard for press photographers at the time. When he got about halfway up, he heard that flag had already been raised on the summit. He continued up anyway. For some reason, Marine commanders decided to replace the first flag with a second larger flag.
Rosenthal did not know where the first flag had been raised, so he focused his attention on the group of Marines preparing to raise the second flag.
Rosenthal piled up some stones and a sandbag so he had something on which to stand, as he was only 5 feet and 5 inches (1.65 m) tall. He set his camera for a lens setting between f/8 and f/11 and put the speed at 1/400th second.
Then, out of the corner of his eye, he saw the group of Marines start to raise the second flag. He swung his camera around toward the action and pushed the shutter button.
Just to make sure he actually had a worthwhile photo to send to his agency, he gathered all the Marines on the summit together for a shot under the flag.
A photo colorized to show all six men - Ira Hayes (red), Franklin Sousley (violet), John Bradley (Green), Harlon Block (Yellow), Michael Strank (brown), Rene Gagnon (teal)
The Marine at the far left of the famous photograph, PFC Ira Hayes, was a member of the Pima tribe from Arizona. The man next to him, PFC Franklin Sousley, was a Kentuckian. Sgt. Michael Strank, a Pennsylvanian, the son of Czechoslovak immigrants, and PFC Rene Gagnon, from New Hampshire, of French-Canadian descent, are virtually screened from view. Pharmacist’s Mate Second Class John Bradley, second from the right (the only man whose face is visible), of the Navy, was from Wisconsin. The Marine kneeling at the far right was first identified as Sgt. Henry Hansen of Massachusetts, but the Marine Corps later said that it was, in fact, Cpl. Harlon Block of Texas, after Hayes informed Block's mother that it was actually her son, and not Hansen, in the picture.
The photo has become the photographic embodiment of WWII. It may well be the most widely reproduced photo ever. It served as the symbol for the seventh War Loan Drive, for which it was plastered on 3.5 million posters. It was used on a U.S. postage stamp and on the cover of countless magazines and newspapers. It served as the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
External links
- Flag Raising Photo Not Posed
- History of the Flag-Raising on Iwo Jima
- This is America-Iwo Jima statue
References
- ^ Norton, Justin (2006-08-21). "AP lensman who shot Iwo Jima photo dies".
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- Mark Edward Harris. "Joe Rosenthal: The Road to Glory". In: Camera & Darkroom (ed.), Volume 16 Number 6 (June 1994). Beverly Hills, CA. pp. 40-49.
- Hal Buell. Uncommon Valor, Common Virtue: Iwo Jima and the Photograph that Captured America (May 2006). New York, NY.