Tony Vaccaro, who photographed World War II in Europe describes 6 of his photos that reveal the 'insanity of war'

 Via Business Insider

Memorial Day, May 31, 2021

A dead GI in Germany's Hurtgen Forest in 1944. 

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Michelantonio "Tony" Vaccaro wanted to serve his country with a camera during World War II, so he tried to join the US Army Signal Corps. But under Uncle Sam's rules, the 20-year-old draftee was too young for that branch.

So Vaccaro, the orphaned son of Italian immigrants, became a private first class in the 83rd Infantry Division. By June 1944, days after the first wave of 156,000 Allied troops descended on the beaches of Normandy, Vaccaro landed on Omaha Beach, where he saw row after row of dead soldiers in the sand.

Vaccaro was armed with an M1 rifle. He also brought along his personal camera: A relatively compact Argus C3 he'd purchased secondhand for $47.50 and had become fond of using as a high-school student in New York.

In addition to fighting on the front lines during the Battle of Normandy and the ensuing Allied advance, Vaccaro photographed what he was seeing. At night, he'd develop rolls of film, mixing chemicals in helmets borrowed from fellow soldiers. He'd hang the wet negatives on tree branches to dry and then carry them with him.

When he had enough to fill a package, he'd generally mail them home to his sisters in the US for safekeeping and to ensure the images would survive even if he did not.

                                Then-GI Tony Vaccaro on the wing of a B-17 Bomber in 1944. 

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

From 1944 to 1945, he moved through France, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany.

Along the way, he took photographs that few others — even the press and Signal Corps photographers — were in a position to take: a fellow soldier's last step before shrapnel tore through him, a jubilant kiss between a GI and a young French girl in a newly liberated town, and many stomach-churning portraits of ransacked corpses that still haunt him.

During 272 days at war, he captured thousands of photos. After the Allied victory, he felt sickened and debilitated by the devastation he saw. He wasn't ready to return to the US. And he never wanted to photograph armed conflict again.

He bought a Jeep and traveled with his camera, eventually photographing brighter moments, like the reconstruction of Europe and the beauty in the lives of famous artists and everyday people.

Vaccaro went on to make a name as a fashion and culture photographer. He traveled the world shooting for magazines like Look and Life and taking portraits of bigwigs including John F. Kennedy, Pablo Picasso, Frank Lloyd Wright, Georgia O'Keeffe, and many more.

A half-century would pass before Vaccaro began publishing the bulk of his surviving wartime photos. The surviving images have been shared widely, including in the 2016 HBO documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC. Tony Vaccaro," in which Vaccaro revisits the history that he had to break Army rules to chronicle.

Tony Vaccaro. Manolo Salas/courtesy of Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro, now 98, survived a bout with COVID-19 last spring that put him in the hospital.

He continues roaming his neighborhood photographing everyday people and selling prints through Monroe Gallery of Photography. From his Queens, New York, studio more than seven decades after World War II, he closes his eyes and thinks of the brutality he documented as an infantryman.

"I see death," Vaccaro told Insider. "Death that should not happen."

Below, he describes six of his photos that he says capture "the insanity of war."

'White Death', Near Ottré, Belgium, January 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro developed the roll containing this image while on leave in 1945. He remembers calling this photograph "Death In The Snow" at first, later deciding that "White Death" was a more "elegant" and fitting name to honor Pvt. Henry Tannenbaum's service and sacrifice. Tannenbaum was killed in action on January 11, 1945, during the Battle of the Bulge.

"When I first took this photo of a GI dead in the snow, I was not aware of who he was. What I did was to chip the snow away and look for his right arm, because in those days, [on] the right arm we carried our dog tags. He was Pvt. Henry Irving Tannenbaum. He was one of the soldiers who fought there, just like me. We fought in the snow. He died in the snow. He was my friend. I knew he had a son. … Many years later I got a call from his son."

'Gott Mit Uns', Hürtgen Forest, Germany, 1944

The burned body of a German tank driver, as seen through Vaccaro's lens.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

.

"He's burning. This was frontline. You can smell him. We knocked out his German tank. We knocked it out, and he jumped out of there and fell dead in front of us. He was the pilot of this tank. Similar age [to me]. Here he's gone. … But [before the photograph] I heard him scream, 'Muter, muter.' He was calling for his mother."

"I took cover [by lying down next to him] and read his belt buckle: 'Gott mit uns.' … It means 'God is with us.' [Before the war] I had seen people that die and go to the church, and from church they go to the cemetery, like my father when I was four. This was a different death."

'Final Steps of Jack Rose', Ottré, Belgium, January 11, 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro captured this image of a soldier he identifies as US Army Pvt. 1st Class Jack Rose of the 83rd Infantry Division, still upright, just after shrapnel from a mortar explosion severed his spine. The explosion, visible between Rose and the fence, threw Vaccaro back many feet. Rose, 23, was killed in action.

"That was Jack Rose. The last step. I was photographing him when this shell comes and explodes. He got killed there, in the village. … The shell could have come to me, too. I was lucky."

'Rhineland Battle', Near Walternienburg, Germany, April 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro says the streaking on some of his war photos comes from the grueling conditions he was in — he didn't have time to properly process and store his work in combat — and possibly from water damage due to a flood in the office where the images were stored after the war.

"We were going forward when a shell comes in, in the back, and explodes. This was Rhineland Battle. I was in a hole as the mortar exploded. I raised my arm up with the camera in my hand above the hole to catch this picture. If that shell had come 20 yards over, I was with these two [soldiers seen in the picture], and my hole was here, and if the shell came [where the two soldiers were or where Vaccaro was], I wouldn't be here talking today."

The Family Back Home', Hürtgen Forest, Germany, January 1945.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

When Vaccaro encountered this dead German soldier, it appeared that other American soldiers had already looted his valuables.

"This is a man who we killed in frontline [fighting]. … That was it. The family back home. A dead German soldier with the pictures he was carrying of his family. … Of course I had photos of my family too. … It reminds me of the tragedy of mankind. He's not a German. He's a human being."

"We just must stop using 'I'm Italian. I'm French. I'm Spanish. I'm German.' That's what makes us enemies of each other. We're all humans. In Spain. In Germany. It's a terrible mistake that man has made. We are humans. And nothing else."

'Defeated Soldier', Frankfurt, Germany, March 1947.

Tony Vaccaro/Tony Vaccaro Studio

Vaccaro captured this image after the war, while photographing the reconstruction of Europe for Stars.

"This man came back [from being a prisoner of war in the US]. He's crying. … He gave up. You see where his family had been. The war is over. He came back, and his house had been destroyed. That's why I call this the defeated soldier. He was German. … Later I was told that he lived here."

"The point is, you see, on this Earth there is only one species, one church. Unfortunately we take this one species and create hundreds and thousands of churches, and each one is different from the next. And that's why man is not attaining peace yet."

View the Tiny Vaccaro collection here

Watch the video "Tony Vaccaro at 98" here 

How Tony Vaccaro Used Photography as the Antidote to Inhumanity

 

How Tony Vaccaro Used Photography as the Antidote to Inhumanity

Via BLIND

Dec. 1, 2020

by Miss Rosen

As his centennial approaches, Tony Vaccaro looks back at a singular life in photography that enabled him to survive both the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19, and work for Flair, Look, and Life during the golden age of picture magazines.

After a lifetime behind the camera, Tony Vaccaro is still going strong. After recovering from COVID-19 earlier this year, the Italian-American photographer, who turns 98 on December 20, has resumed his workout routine. On an unseasonably warm late November morning, he ran a 12:54 mile; not bad for the high school athlete who shaved 42 seconds off the record in 1943. “I plan at 100 to establish a new record for running a mile,” Vaccaro says from his home in Long Island City, Queens.

After Degas, Woman and Flowers, New York City, 1960 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

It’s more than a notion; Vaccaro is a survivor par excellence. Born Michelantonio Celestino Onofrio Vaccaro in Greensburg Pennsylvania, in 1922, Vaccaro was just four years old when both his parents died while the family was relocating to Italy. The horrors of his childhood linger to this day, as the photographer recounts the abuse he suffered at the hands of his father’s brother while growing up in Italy.

“My uncle and his wife never had children and they didn’t know how handle them,” Vaccaro says. “Because of this, I was punished every day. I was black and blue for 15 years of my life, until I got in the Army. They looked and asked, ‘What happened to you, son?’ I couldn’t tell the truth, that people were beating me for everything I did wrong.”

Dominique Sanda, Cannes, France, 1975 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

Though the bruises have healed, the memories remain tempered by a love his discovered as a teen. After World War II broke out in Europe, Vaccaro fled to the United States, and enrolled in Isaac E. Young High School in New Rochelle, New York. The young artist dreamed of being a sculptor but fate had other plans.

“Mr. Louis, a teacher, told me, ‘Tony, these sculptures are pretty good but you are born to be a photographer.’ I had never heard the word photography before,” Vaccaro says. “He told me, ‘You will make a great life with it,’ and by God he was right. I was then 14, 15. I’ve been a photographer for 85 years and I still feel very good.”

Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man

Givenchy with camera by the pool, south of France, 1961 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

The new exhibition, Tony Vaccaro at 98, looks back at the photographer’s extraordinary career, which began in earnest when he was drafted into World War II. Deployed to Europe as a private in the 83rd Infantry Division, which was nicknamed “Thunderbolt,” Vaccaro fought in Normandy, Belgium, Luxembourg, and Germany. As a scout, he was able to make photographs bearing witness to the horrors of war from the frontline. His images of death, destruction, and defeat stand as poignant reminders of the inhumanity of war, and the necessity for survival against the odds.

“I was wounded twice but I’m still here,” Vaccaro says. “I took pictures every day of GIs fighting, dying, being wounded, so I have a collection of pictures that I took then that I don’t think another photographer ever dared to live the kind of life I did.” 

Kiss of liberation: Sergeant Gene Constanzo knees to kiss a little girl during spontaneous celebrations in the main square of the town of Saint Briac, France, August 14th, 1944 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

After being discharged in September 1945, Vaccaro remained in Germany, where he worked as a photojournalist Weekend, the Sunday supplement to U.S. Army newspaper Stars and Stripes for the next four years. He returned stateside in 1949, working for Flair, Look, and Life during the golden age of picture magazines.

Soon Vaccaro was traveling the globe, making stops everywhere from the source of the Nile River to the South Pole. He remembers an assignment for Venture magazine, where he traveled north along the Nile for over 40 days in 1963. The journey ended in Alexandria and a visit with Egyptian President Gamal Abdel Nasser. Standing along the waterfront, Nasser pointed to the Roman ruins that remained, and made a reference to Caesar, telling Vaccaro, "Look, your people were here 2,000 years ago!"

Finding Love Amid the Stars

Pablo Picasso, Mougins, France, 1967 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

Over the next 25 years, Vaccaro would amass one of the greatest archives of fashion and celebrity photography, creating iconic images of artists such as Pablo Picasso, Georgia O’Keeffe, Alexander Calder, Jackson Pollock, W. Eugene Smith, and Marcel Duchamp, as well as Hollywood royalty including Marlene Dietrich, Lauren Bacall, Sophia Loren, Grace Kelly, and Ali McGraw.

Georgia O'Keeffe with "Pelvis" series painting, New Mexico, 1960 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

“I always worked with people who were easy to be with,” Vaccaro says, recounting moments spent with everyone from fashion designer Hubert de Givenchy to filmmaker Federico Fellini. Vaccaro recounts his encounter with famous collector Peggy Guggenheim in Venice with aplomb. “If you go to her palazzo, you will see a statue of a man on a horse, and the sculptor gave the horse a penis as big from the tip of my fingers to my elbow. The day I went to photograph her, school children were coming to to visit her place, so she climbed on a ladder, and unscrewed the penis and hid it under her dress,” he says with a laugh. 

Peggy Guggenheim, Venice, Italy, 1968 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

But perhaps the most special encounter he had was on assignment to photograph Marimekko, a Finnish home design and fashion company, where he met Anja Kyllikki, a model who would become his wife in 1963.“I went to a fashion show and they were 20 beautiful girls in the theater,” Vaccaro recalls. “One of them, our eyes met, and met, and met. I told her, ‘Look I feel as if I could marry you.’ And she said, ‘You took the words out of my mouth because I want to marry you.’ And that’s how I married my wife.”

Celebrating a Life in Photography

Gwen Verdon for LOOK, New York, City, 1953 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography

A true fighter, Vaccaro is one of the few people to survive both the Battle of Normandy and COVID-19. He attributes his longevity to the winning combination of “blind luck, red wine, and determination.” For Vaccaro, art has been the antidote for the inhumanity he has witnessed throughout his life. His spirit is filled with light and joy, and a faith in the future that includes us all.

“Mankind is an amazing animal,” Vaccaro says. “We have created so much: television, photography, monuments, great roads. The earth is paradise as far as I am concerned. We live in paradise, no question. My desire is for mankind to destroy the nations and just create one nation in the universe, one world.”

Leslie Uggams, 1963 © Tony Vaccaro / Courtesy Monroe Gallery of Photography




By Miss Rosen

Miss Rosen is a New York-based writer focusing on art, photography, and culture. Her work has been published in books, magazines, and websites including Time, Vogue, Artsy, Aperture, Dazed, and Vice, among others.

Tony Vaccaro at 98
On view through January 17, 2021
Monroe Gallery, 112 Don Gaspar, Santa Fe, NM 87501, USA

https://www.monroegallery.com/

September at Monroe Gallery of Photography

The acclaimed exhibition "Tony Vaccaro: War and Peace" has been extended through September 24, 2017.

Monroe Gallery of Photography was honored to welcome Tony Vaccaro to Santa Fe for the opening of the exhibition. Among the highlights of Tony's visit was his return  to the location near Georgia O'Keeffe's home where he made his iconic photograph of Georgia holding " "Pelvic Series, Red with Yellow.

Courtesy of The Tony Vaccaro Studio

In conjunction with the exhibit, Monroe Gallery sponsored two sold-out free screenings of the Emmy Award nominated HBO documentary film “Under Fire: The Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro”. The film tells the story of how Tony survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone. “Underfire: the Untold Story of Private First Class Tony Vaccaro” was recently nominated for the 2017 Outstanding Historical Documentary Emmy.

Tony Vaccaro, now 94, was the keynote speaker at the recent 100th anniversary of the 83rd Infantry Division reunion in Cleveland, Ohio, August 2-6.

Opening October 6,  the gallery is pleased to present a major exhibition of photographs from one of America’s most accomplished photographers, Art Shay. The exhibit of 50 photographs opens Friday, October 6 with a public reception from 5 – 7 PM, and continues through November 19.

For over 70 years, Art Shay has documented life, combining his gifts of storytelling, humor and empathy. The Lucie Awards is the premiere annual event honoring the greatest achievements in photography. Art Shay, now 95,  will be honored with the Lucie statue for Lifetime Achievement during the Lucie Awards gala ceremony at Carnegie Hall in New York October 29, 2017.

At the same time, renowned photographer Steve Schapiro will receive the Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. Earlier this year the Gallery presented the exhibition "EYEWITNESS” to celebrate the completion of a project based on James Baldwin’s 1963 book, “The Fire Next Time”. Steve Schapiro’s photographs documenting the civil rights movement from 1963 – 1968 are paired with essays from “The Fire Next Time” by James Baldwin in a major book  published by Taschen in March.

Monroe Gallery is now representing Ryan Vizzions, a respected photographer who occupies Atlanta’s underground art circles. In 2014, Vizzions was awarded a Readers Pick for Best Fine Art Photographer in Creative Loafing’s Best of Atlanta issue. Beginning in September 2016, Vizzions, 33, went to the front lines at Standing Rock, North Dakota, documenting the fight to stop the Dakota Access Pipeline from scarring sovereign Native American land and tunneling underneath the Missouri River. Working as part of the media team for the Sioux Tribe’s Oceti Sakowin Camp, he photographed outside the mainstream media. One of his photograph, titled "Defend the Sacred," has appeared in publications including Newsweek and People magazine’s “Year in Pictures” spread, among others.

US Premiere of Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro at Boston Film Festival September 22

Underfire: The Untold Story of Pfc. Tony Vaccaro – Trailer from Dog Green Productions on Vimeo.


BOSTON – September 12, 2016 – The 2016 Boston Film Festival program presents a panorama of striking projects that include “American Wrestler: The Wizard” (starring Oscar winner Jon Voight and William Fichtner, “Crash,” “The Perfect Storm”) and “The First Girl I Loved” -- along with the U. S. premiere of the documentary “Underfire” and the East Coast premiere of “Finding Oscar” (produced by Oscar winner Steven Spielberg). Many of the films address themes of acceptance, tolerance and bullying, timely and urgent concerns in contemporary society.

In the Opening Night U.S. Premiere documentary “Underfire,” World War II veteran Tony Vaccaro fought as an infantryman before returning to begin a successful career as a renowned commercial photographer. As a 21-year-old soldier, Vaccaro’s story began in combat as he took over 8,000 photographs on the front lines – harrowing and personal images that were not made public until the 1990s. The director is Max Lewkowicz from Dog Green Productions and HBO/Cargo Films. Max Lewkowicz and Tony Vaccaro will be in Boston for the film premiere.

Q&A Attendees Immediately After Film:

Dir. Max Lewkowicz, Tony Vaccaro, Senior NYT Staff Photographer James Estrin

Tickets and information here.

Full press release here.

"Underfire" will air nationally on HBO November 14, 2016.

Related: Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to represent Tony Vaccaro

SPRING NEWS FROM MONROE GALLERY OF PHOTOGRAPHY, SANTA FE, NM

The ultimate digital magazine where everything about photography is published daily, L’Oeil de la Photographie, recently feature the gallery’s current exhibition “Vintage Photojournalism”. The feature may be viewed here.

  

Art Shay: Hilton Hotel, Michigan Avenue, August 1968, Democratic Convention

  “Vintage Photojournalism” is a major exhibition of rare vintage prints from the 20th Century’s master photojournalists. The exhibit features unique, one of a kind prints that were used to fill requests for reproduction in LIFE magazine and other major publications, many with important historic information inscribed and stamped on the verso (backside) of the photograph. The exhibit continues through April 24.

We are very pleased to announce that the gallery is now representing the Spider Martin civil rights collection.  Alabama photojournalist, James "Spider" Martin, (b. 1939 - 2003) was employed as a staff photographer at The Birmingham News during one of the most eventful periods in American history. Martin covered key events during the 1960s civil rights movement, most notably Bloody Sunday and other historic incidents from the Selma to Montgomery march. His civil rights photographs are in included in the many collections, including the Birmingham Civil Rights museum, the National Museum of African American History and Culture, and the Dolph Briscoe Center for American History.

While a small number of Spider's civil rights era photographs have been published and exhibited, most of these dramatic and moving images have never been shown publicly because of their controversial nature for the time.

Spider Martin: Dr. King delivering his speech to the triumphant crowd at the end of the march, March 25, 1965

Monroe Gallery of Photography will be again exhibiting at the AIPAD Photography Show April 13 – 17 in New York at the Park Avenue Amory, 643 Park Avenue. The gallery will be in booth # 104. Celebrating its 36th year in 2016, The Photography Show features more than 80 of the world’s leading photography art galleries. We will be exhibiting specially selected photographs from the gallery's renowned collection of 20th and 21st Century master photojournalists. Among the highlights selected for this year's exhibition are: vintage prints from Spider Martin alongside other important civil rights photographs; a rare selection of never-before-seen vintage prints of photographs taken by Bill Eppridge on the night Robert F. Kennedy was assassinated;  a rare vintage print made from the original negative of the iconic image from World War II by George Silk "An Australian soldier, Private George "Dick" Whittington, is aided by Papuan orderly Raphael Oimbari, near Buna on 25 December 1942";  several large-scale color photographs from Stephen Wilkes’ Bethlehem Steel, China, and Day To Night collections, and an exciting previously unseen large scale photograph of David Bowie taken in New Mexico in 1975 during the filming of “The Man Who Fell To Earth” that is featured in the forthcoming book “Bowie: Photographs by Steve Schapiro” which will be published April 26, 2016 by PowerHouse Books, and many other exciting new additions to the gallery’s collection.

Steve Schapiro: David Bowie,  New Mexico, 1975 ( “The Man Who Fell To Earth’)

 We would like to invite you to visit the AIPAD Show as our guests, please contact the gallery for complimentary admission to the Show.

We will round out the Spring season with the exhibition “Alfred Eisenstaedt: Classics and seldom-seen photographs”: April 29 – June 26. Renowned as the father of modern photojournalism, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s career as a preeminent photojournalist spanned eight decades. The exhibition of more than 50 photographs features numerous classic images, several little-known gems, and never-before-exhibited photographs.

We hope to see you in the coming months, and please do not hesitate to contact us for any information.

Our best,

Sid and Michelle Monroe

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Santa Fe Public Radio "At Noon" features Margaret Bourke-White exhibition

 

 

KSFR Santa Fe Public Radio

 

The exhibition Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer was featured on "At Noon" June 15, 2015.

The work of trail-blazing photo-journalist Margaret Bourke-White is on display in downtown Santa Fe. The Monroe Gallery of Photography opened in Santa Fe in 2002, re-locating from Manhattan where it stood near the targeted World Trade Center towers on September 11th, 2001. The Monroe Gallery specializes in classic black & white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. Sid Monroe co-owns the gallery with his wife, Michelle. The Bourke-White exhibit at the Monroe Gallery runs through June 28th.


Listen here.

Happy Birthday Margaret Bourke-White



 Margaret Bourke-White working atop the Chrysler Building, NY 1934

by Oscar Graubner

Margaret Bourke-White was born on June 14, 1904, in New York City, and graduated from Cornell University in 1927. Choosing photography as a profession, she immediately began her dramatic career by experimenting with industrial subjects.

 

  

THE Magazine Review: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer

 PHOTOGRAPH Magazine Review: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photojournalist

 

The exhibition continues through June 28, 2015.

 

 

REVIEW: Margaret Bourke-White: Pioneering Photographer

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, silver gelatin photograph, 14” x 11”, 1936

THE Magazine
June, 2015

IMAGINE, IF YOU CAN, A WORLD IN WHICH PHOTOGRAPHS WERE A RARE FORM

 of artistic documentation whose workings few understood. Imagine the United States in the first third of the twentieth century, with illiteracy and poverty key defining characteristics of the pitiable lives led by you and most everyone you knew. Images had nearly the power and drama, then, that they did during the Counter-Reformation in Europe, when the Catholic Church fought back against dull Protestantism with paintings as theatrical as opera sets, their shadowy depths filled with depictions of gruesome martyrdom—lit only at the moment of a would-be saint’s transmutation from agonizingly human into gloriously divine. Radiant sculptural forms of gold and silver reflected not merely the material wealth but the spiritual wealth of a religion that had dominated that part of the world for roughly a millennium. Bring yourself back now, from the seventeenth to the twentieth century and from Europe to the United States, populated by the shell-shocked heroes of the Great War dancing with pretty little flappers, their bobbed hairdos gleaming, and the gangsters, with their molls, who kept the country’s beak wet during Prohibition; imagine, finally, on a late fall day in 1929, stock-market millions vanishing within hours, heartlessly slamming shut the doors to the anything-goes twenties. (While you’re at it, imagine the unthinkable: Wall Street investors with such an overwhelming sense of responsibility that they jumped out of skyscrapers rather than face their own— and their clients’—financial ruin. Incomprehensible!) Meanwhile, the Great Depression loomed in the drought-stricken plains of America’s heartland. In the mind’s eye, these times could only have existed in grayed-out shades of black and white. Color, it seems, had been forgotten.

 

Unlike now, when anybody with a cell phone can, and unfortunately does, take pictures of everything from their breakfast to their genitalia—and makes them available to an unwitting public—only a very few of those initiated into the science of the lens and the alchemy of the darkroom were able to make photographs in the 1930s. Margaret Bourke-White was one of the few, and she led a charge of firsts: the first woman to photograph for LIFE magazine (for you post-Millennials, sort of the Internet of its time), the first accredited female war photographer (in World War II), and the first Western photographer allowed into the Soviet Union to record the proletariat’s triumph of mega-industry over the ease and comfort of privileged individuals.

 

In that heyday of pioneering photographers whom Bourke-White epitomized, black-and-white photography equaled photojournalism, which equaled truth with a capital T. This Truth was on a par with the same truth Americans revered in Norman Rockwell’s “real-life” scenes lifted straight out of a Mayberry without the laugh track, long before there was a Sheriff Taylor, Opie, Deputy Fife, or Aunt Bee. Or even television, for that matter. When images were few and far between, they had a credibility that is lost today in a thick overlay of irony and sheer disbelief. In the 1930s, if it appeared in LIFE magazine, or the Saturday Evening Post, or the newspaper, it was flat-out real.

Viewers lacked the objectivity to read meaning into a photograph as social commentary, for example, any more than the illiterate could read the black marks scratched into the white page.

The always-excellent Monroe Gallery presented their exhibition of silver gelatin photographs by Margaret Bourke-White as art, finding that, for her “as an artist,” photography served “as an instrument to examine social issues from a humanitarian perspective. She witnessed and documented some of the twentieth century’s most notable moments, including the liberation of German concentration camps by General Patton in 1945...” Bourke-White’s picture, “German civilians made to look at instruments of torture and execution at Buchenwald concentration camp, 1945,” is hardly an icon of objectivity. Nor should it be; some truths are beyond apprehension. Not to quibble with our dearly held ideals of photojournalism as an act of witnessing and documenting, but black-and-white imagery exists, among other reasons, when color cannot hold the entirety of its content. We demand this state of in-between-ness from art when what it depicts is too awful for mere reproduction.

While today you can find images of gore online anytime you choose to search for them, that they are not generally reproduced ad infinitum speaks to our understanding of the power of imagery. What Warhol repeated in a nightmarish grid (Jackie’s grief-stricken face on Air Force One en route from Dallas), and Picasso abstracted in his Guernica, Bourke-White reflected in the faces of her “German civilians” at Buchenwald.

Finally, when her country needed shoring up in 1936, during the height of the Depression, LIFE, a burgeoning publication that would become our society’s pocket mirror for at least a couple of decades, chose for its very first cover Bourke-White’s symbol of capitalism’s ultimate success. Her Fort Peck dam picture, all art-deco curves and fat-cat angles, describes more than the enormous potential for hydroelectric power: It is an image of America rediscovering her own righteous might, an America that, like the photographer “Maggie the Indestructible,” would liberate us from ourselves. There was the evidence, right in front of us in it-must­be-true black and white. —Kathryn M Davis

Margaret Bourke-White, Fort Peck Dam, Fort Peck, MT, silver gelatin photograph, 14” x 11”, 1936 ©Time Inc.

 

--The exhibition continues through June 28, 2015

 

 

On this day in 1945

On this day in 1945, U.S. and Filipino soldiers recaptured Manila.

General Douglas MacArthur Landing at Luzon Photo: Carl Mydans

 

 

 

Related: World War II in Photographs at the McNay Art Museum

World War II in Photographs at the McNay Art Museum

 
Joe Rosenthal/©AP

World War II in Photographs

January 13, 2015 to May 10, 2015

Via The McNay Art Museum

 World War II in Photographs: Looking Back commemorates the 70th anniversary of the war’s end and honors San Antonio’s great military heritage with an exhibition of iconic images by some of the great photojournalists of the time. It also documents the war effort on the home front in San Antonio. A special feature is a group of photographs of the Monuments and Fine Arts Officers, or “Monuments Men,” who rescued art stolen by the Nazis.

The exhibition is especially fitting for the McNay, as Marion Koogler McNay was a strong supporter of the war effort on the home front. Don Denton McNay, her first husband, died at an Army camp in Florida during World War I. During World War II, she purchased and furnished many residences across San Antonio to provide housing for young officers and their families, going so far as to move houses to the grounds of her estate that became the McNay Art Museum.

World War II in Photographs includes images by such luminaries as Margaret Bourke-White, Alfred Eisenstadt, and Carl Mydans that express the heroism, sacrifices, and hard work that brought victory. These photographs are sure to fascinate a younger generation unfamiliar with them, as well as an older generation of Americans that remembers them well.

Images have been provided by a variety of sources including the Fort Sam Houston Museum, San Antonio, Texas; Library of Congress, Washington D.C; Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Monuments Men Foundation for the Preservation of Art, Dallas, Texas; National Museum of the Pacific War, Fredericksburg, Texas; and The University of Texas at San Antonio Libraries Special Collections.

Link for tickets.


This exhibition is organized by the McNay Art Museum. The Elizabeth Huth Coates Exhibition Endowment and the Arthur and Jane Stieren Fund for Exhibitions are lead sponsors. Susan and John Kerr, the Director’s Circle, and the Host Committee are providing additional support.

Image: Joe Rosenthal, Marines of the 28th Regiment of the 5th Division Raise the American Flag Atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, 1945.  © Associated Press
Courtesy of Monroe Gallery of Photography, Santa Fe, New Mexico.

Photo exhibit captures soldiers unaware of their fate in Philippines

By Chris Quintana
Via The Santa Fe New Mexican

In August 1940, members of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment gathered to train at Camp Luna near Las Vegas, N.M., before deployment to the Bataan Peninsula. Many never returned. Courtesy New Mexico Magazine Collection/Palace of the Governors Photo Archives Negative No. HP200720332


The young men photographed during military drills or waiting in line for food at Camp Luna near Las Vegas, N.M., had no idea that hundreds of them would die defending the Bataan Peninsula, walking in the Bataan Death March or during imprisonment by the Japanese under brutal conditions.


In August 1940, members of the 200th Coast Artillery Regiment, which included more than 1,800 New Mexicans, had gathered to train for the last time on home soil. A year later, their units were deployed to the Philippines. The 10 black-and-white images in a new photo exhibit at the Jean Cocteau Cinema capture the soldiers’ blissful ignorance.
                                

“They’re human beings, not just cogs in the machine,” said Daniel Kosharek, the photo curator for the Palace of the Governors.

Kosharek said he has wanted to display these photos for a while to honor and recognize the young men, but until now he didn’t have the chance.

The exhibit will be on display at the Jean Cocteau until Oct. 12 in the cinema’s gallery at 418 Montezuma Ave. It will be open to the public from 1 to 8 p.m. daily. The images by an unnamed photographer are from the New Mexico Magazine Collection at the Palace of the Governors Photo Archives.

Kosharek said the photos were part of a series that published in a 1940 edition of New Mexico Magazine.

Many of the 1,816 New Mexicans in the regiment were fluent in Spanish, which led military officials to deploy them to the Philippines before the war to aid Filipino troops in defending the Bataan Peninsula.

When the peninsula fell to the Japanese in April 1942, many were captured and forced on the 65-mile Bataan Death March that ended in the deaths of 10,000 troops — 9,000 Filipinos and 1,000 Americans.

According to a news release, by the end of the war, 829 New Mexicans from the regiment were dead or missing. More than 800 died during the march or during their imprisonment. A third of the survivors perished within the year due to injuries or illness. Two survivors still live in Santa Fe: Richard Dalyand John Moseley.

But the photos in the exhibit show none of the horrors awaiting the young men. Instead, the men are photographed slogging through the monotony of military training at the rural, dusty Camp Luna.

One photo depicts a line of soldiers clad in wide-brimmed hats marching along what appears to be a dusty road. Rifles are slung over their shoulders, but the firearms look more like props than weapons. Another image depicts the soldiers-in-training firing heavy artillery. A plume of dark gray smoke wafts from one of the cannons, a harbinger of what awaits the men overseas.

One of the photos depicts several tall young men waiting in line at the mess hall. They carry what appear to be tin pans and ceramic plates. Dressed in civilian attire, they leer at the photographer with a combination of something between curiosity and annoyance. One wears an Albuquerque High School T-shirt adorned with the school’s mascot, a growling bulldog. The photos are specked with dust, but there’s no denying the innocence in the young men’s faces.

As part of the exhibit, the Jean Cocteau will screen the 2005 film The Great Raid at 1:30 p.m. Saturday. The film was based on William Breuer’s The Great Raid on Cabanatuan and Hampton Sides’ Ghost Soldiers, both accounts of the rescue mission to save Bataan prisoners of war. Tickets are $7.

If you go

What: Photo exhibit titled Before Bataan: New Mexico’s 200th Coast Artillery

When: 1 to 8 p.m. through Oct. 12

Where: Jean Cocteau Cinema, 418 Montezuma Ave.

On the Web

• For more information about the photo exhibit, visit nmhistorymuseum.org or jeancocteaucinema.com.

Navy veteran who claimed to be the man in the 1945 photo of a sailor kissing a nurse in Times Square amid World War II victory celebrations has died

Alfred Eisenstaedt: V.J. Day in Times Square, New York, August 14, 1945

©Time Inc.

"In Times Square on V.J. Day I saw a sailor running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight. Whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn't make a difference. I was running ahead of him with my Leica looking back over my shoulder but none of the pictures that were possible pleased me. Then suddenly, in a flash, I saw something white being grabbed. I turned around and clicked the moment the sailor kissed the nurse. If she had been dressed in a dark dress I would never have taken the picture. If the sailor had worn a white uniform, the same. I took exactly four pictures. It was done within a few seconds.Only one is right, on account of the balance. In the others the emphasis is wrong — the sailor on the left side is either too small or too tall. People tell me that when I am in heaven they will remember this picture." --Alfred Eisensdtaedt, Eisenstaedt on Eisenstaedt, Abbeville Press

 

©Time Inc.

Glen McDuffie is one of several people who have claimed to be the man in the Alfred Eisenstaedt photo originally published in LIFE Magazine.

"While many people claimed to be the participants in the iconic photograph, McDuffie's assertion was backed up by Lois Gibson, a forensic artist with the Houston Police Department." (Via Gothamist:  Famous V-J Day Times Square Kiss Sailor Dies At 86)

Many others have also publicly claimed to be the participants in the photograph, as in this 2012 article, with one even going so far as to  file a lawsuit against Time Inc. alleging that both Time and Life had violated his right of publicity by using the photograph without his permission. He eventually dropped the lawsuit.

In October 1980, Life published a special spread entitled “Who Is the Kissing Sailor?” Ten sailors wrote to the magazine, each one insisting with convincing evidence — a distinctive hairline, a signature vein on the right hand, a newly acquired Quartermaster 1st Class patch — that he was the “kissing sailor”. Three women also wrote in and claimed to be the nurse.

At exhibitions of his photographs towards then of his life, Alfred Eisenstaedt would frequently encounter people claiming to be the sailor or the nurse. Always gracious, Eisie would simply shake their hands and say "How nice". He was working alone that day in Times Square, without a reporter, and never paused to get anyones name.



The New York Times: Man Known as Kissing Sailor in WWII-Era Image Dies

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath at Brooklyn Museum

Louie Palu (Canadian, b. 1968). U.S. Marine Gysgt. Carlos "OJ" Orjuela, age 31, Garmsir District, Helmand Province, Afghanistan, from Project: Home Front, 2008. Inkjet print, artist's proof, 21½ x 14¼ in. (54.6 x 36.2 cm). The Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, gift of Joan Morgenstern. © Photographer Louie Palu

Via The Brooklyn Museum

November 8, 2013–February 2, 2014

Robert E. Blum Gallery, 1st Floor

 

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath explores the experience of war with an unprecedented collection of 400 photographic prints, books, magazines, albums, and camera equipment, bringing together iconic and unknown images taken by members of the military, commercial portraitists, journalists, amateurs, artists, and numerous Pulitzer Prize–winning photographers.

Including the work of some 255 photographers from around the globe who have covered conflicts over the last 166 years, WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY examines the interrelationship between war and photography, reveals the evolution of the medium by which war is recorded and remembered, and explores the range of experience of armed conflict: recruitment, training, embarkation, daily routine, battle, death and destruction, homecoming, and remembrance. In addition to depicting the phases of war, WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY includes portraits of servicemen, military and political leaders, and civilians and refugees.

The objects on view include rare daguerreotypes and vintage photographs, such as Roger Fenton’s iconic The Valley of the Shadow of Death (1855) from the Crimean War and an early print of Joe Rosenthal’s Old Glory Goes Up on Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima. More recent images include a 2008 photograph of the Battle Company of the 173rd Airborne Brigade in eastern Afghanistan by Tim Hetherington.

WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY: Images of Armed Conflict and Its Aftermath has been organized by the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston, curatorial team of Anne Wilkes Tucker, Will Michels, and Natalie Zelt. The Brooklyn presentation is organized by Tricia Laughlin Bloom, Associate Curator of Exhibitions, Brooklyn Museum.

Generous support for the exhibition in Brooklyn has been provided by the Robert Mapplethorpe Foundation and the Martha A. and Robert S. Rubin Exhibition Fund.


  
Perspectives Talk: Ashley Gilbertson

Friday, November 8, 2013 at 2 p.m.
Elizabeth A. Sackler Center for Feminist Art, 4th Floor

Brooklyn Museum
200 Eastern Parkway
Brooklyn, New York 11238-6052   
Get detailed directions

 

 

 

Hours

Wednesday: 11 a.m.–6 p.m.
Thursday: 11 a.m.–10 p.m.
Friday–Sunday: 11 a.m.–6 p.

67 Years after Liberation, Bourke-White Print of Buchenwald Sells for Over $115,000

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"Sotheby's Photographs sale brought $3.8 million and achieved strong prices
for the masters of 20th-century photography, including Ansel Adams,
Margaret Bourke-White, Edward Steichen and Robert Mapplethorpe."

Sotheby's Photographs Sale
April 3, 2012
LOT 74: MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE, 1904-1971


THE LIVING DEAD AT BUCHENWALD
large-format, ferrotyped, mounted, annotations in ink on the reverse, framed, 1945 (Portrait
of  Myself, pp. 268-9; Callahan, pp. 152-153; Goldberg, pl. 45; Retrospective, p. 93; Best of
Life, p. 20)
15 5/8 by 19 3/8 in. (39.7 by 49.3 cm.)

ESTIMATE 30,000-50,000 USD
Sold: 116,500 USD

Related: April in History: The Liberation of Buchenwald
             
              Modern print information available here

A Woman Of Photos And Firsts, Ruth Gruber At 100

Via NPR

At the age of 100, Ruth Gruber is responsible for a lot of firsts. When she was just 20, she became the youngest Ph.D. ever at the University of Cologne in Germany. She was the first photojournalist, much less female journalist, to travel to and cover both the Soviet Arctic and Siberian gulag. She documented Holocaust survivors and the plight of the ship, the Exodus 1947.

Photographer unknown/Courtesy of International Center of Photography

Ruth Gruber, Alaska, 1941-43

 

 

Born in Brooklyn in 1911 to Jewish immigrants, Gruber has been the subject of a documentary film; of a made-for-TV movie; a musical; and, earlier this summer, she received a Cornell Capa Award and exhibition at the International Center of Photography (ICP) in Manhattan.

It was as a correspondent in the Soviet Arctic in the mid-1930s that Gruber first started taking photographs — focusing on frontier life and the role of women. No one taught her, just as no one taught her to write. She had an ear and an eye.

Slideshow: Ruth Gruber/Courtesy of International Center of Photography

"She was just a badass — no other way describe it," says Maya Benton, curator of the ICP exhibition. Gruber was already an established author and reporter when U.S. Secretary of the Interior Harold L. Ickes appointed her Field Representative to the Alaska Territory in 1941, where she made some of the earliest color images of the region.

It was in Alaska that she learned what she called to "live inside of time." In her New York City apartment she tells the story of once sending a cable to Anchorage, in need of a flight to Barrow:

"So I got a cable back from this company that had bush pilots: 'See you Tuesday, weather permitting.' Tuesday came, no pilot. Another Tuesday came, no pilot. I'd send another cable. No pilot. In New York, if the train was late, I was raring to go. What was the use getting upset in Alaska? So I decided I would just live inside of it like a golden bubble."

Andy Kropa/Getty Images

Ruth Gruber attends a tribute organized in her honor, in New York City in February, 2011.

It's a quality that Gruber claims is responsible for her ability to be patient — to see things that she might otherwise have missed in her urge to tell a story. That, and being a woman gave her an advantage in getting sources to reveal themselves.

In 1944, she spent two weeks on the Henry Gibbins, a ship of 1,000 Jewish refugees, many of them clad in striped concentration camp uniforms, on a voyage from Italy to America.

She recalls: "Some of the men said, 'We can't tell you what we went through, it's too obscene. You're a young woman!' I said, 'Forget I'm a woman, you are the first witnesses coming to America.' So they talked. Nobody refused to talk."

As she recounts in her memoir, she told the men and women that through them, America would "learn the truth of Hitler's crimes." But it was on another ship, three years later, that Gruber did some of her best-known work. The Tribune assigned Gruber to accompany the United Nations Special Committee on Palestine.

In Haifa, she saw the nearly-destroyed ship, Exodus 1947, and its 4,500 Holocaust survivors, who were forced to board three ships waiting to take them back to Germany. It was on the Runnymede Park that she took what is her most famous photograph: A Union Jack superimposed with a Swastika — and beneath it in the high contrast of a burning sun, hundreds of people squashed together. The image became Life magazine's photo of the week.

Ruth Gruber/International Center of Photography

1,500 Jewish refugees, having been forced off Exodus 1947 in Haifa, Palestine, wait aboard the British prison ship Runnymede Park. In protest, the prisoners painted a swastika on top of the Union Jack. August 22, 1947

In her doctoral dissertation on Virginia Woolf, the 20-year-old Gruber wrote that her subject "is determined to write as a woman. Through the eyes of her sex, she seeks to penetrate life and describe it." The same could be said of the woman who wrote that: 100-year-old Ruth Gruber.

The flag on Iwo Jima: 100 years of a legendary AP photographer

Via AP
Sunday, October 9, 2011 at 10:22am

U.S. Marines of the 28th Regiment of the Fifth Division raise the American flag atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, in this photo taken on Feb. 23, 1945. (AP Photo/Joe Rosenthal) © 2011 AP


The man who photographed five Marines and a Navy corpsman lifting the American flag over the summit of Mt. Suribachi on Iwo Jima, creating the most memorable image of the fight that was World War II, was born exactly 100 years ago — on Oct. 9, 1911.


In an oral history for the AP Corporate Archives in 1997, Joe Rosenthal recalls leaving his native Washington, D.C. and heading to San Francisco in 1929 seeking any kind of work — and he found it as an office boy at the Newspaper Enterprise Association.

AP photographer Joe Rosenthal, who landed with the invading U.S. Marines on Iwo Jima on Feb. 19, 1945. (AP Photos) © 2011 AP“They showed me the front end and the back end of a camera, and encouraged me, and it wasn’t very long before I was off shooting,” he recalled. His first assignment was to photograph rhododendrons in Golden Gate Park.


When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor, Rosenthal was a photographer at the AP bureau in San Francisco. After the Army declined to take him into service due to his bad eyesight, he joined the United States Maritime Service. In March 1944, he went to the Pacific for AP, landing alongside the Marines and Infantry divisions as they fought to retake New Guinea, Guam, Angaur and Peleliu.


Apart from surviving, his chief aim during these assaults was the protection of his camera.


On Feb. 23, 1945, Rosenthal had been on Iwo Jima for four days. Progress up the mountain had been measured in inches. There was no pathway, only chewed up ground. Caves had to be dynamited to subdue the enemy before troops could proceed.


As he reached the brow of the hill, he recalled, “I swung my Graphic around, close up to my face, and held it, watching through the finder, to see when I could estimate what’s the peak of the picture.”


A full week elapsed before he saw what the finder had seen. “Hey, there’s a good shot,” was his modest appraisal.

Valerie Komor

What he was not muted about was his respect for the effort it took to get to Suribachi in the first place. “I see what had to be gone through before those Marines, with that flag, or with any flag, got up to the top of that mountain.”


Joe Rosenthal died in Novato, Calif., on Aug. 20, 2006. He was 94.


IN HIS OWN WORDS

Watch these video clips of Rosenthal describing his experiences with Iwo Jima, and with his famous shot.

• How he got to the top of Mount Suribachi on Iwo Jima, and what he found when he got there.
• The Marines’ preparations for the flag-raising and his emotional response to the image.
• Details about the shot itself, including the camera, the technical expertise required and Marines’ response to the moment.

Valerie Komor is the director of the AP Corporate Archives.


___

Follow AP on Twitter here.

VJ-DAY, TIMES SQUARE, NEW YORK, AUGUST 14, 1945

The V-J Day picture of the white-clad nurse by photographer Alfred Eisenstaedt captured an epic moment in U.S. history and became an iconic image marking the end of the war after being published in Life magazine.

It is probably the most iconographic image associated with LIFE, photojournalism, and World War II. Eisenstaedt recounts how he got the shot: “I was walking through the crowds on V-J Day, looking for pictures. I noticed a sailor coming my way. He was grabbing every female he could find and kissing them all – young girls and old ladies alike… The sailor came along, grabbed the nurse, and bent down to kiss her. Now if this girl hadn’t been a nurse, if she’d been dressed in dark clothes, I wouldn’t have had a picture. People tell me that when I’m in heaven, they will remember this picture.”

Via Monroe Gallery of Photograpy Blog

"V-J Day, Times Square" is featured in the exhibition "History's Big Picture", through September 25

REVIEW: "ICONIC CONSCIOUSNESS"



Eric Smith: Funeral for Iraq War Soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan, 2006

By Maylin Wilson Powell
The Albuquerque Journal
July 29, 2011

In our current era of citizen journalism, when amateur submissions are used on Internet news sites, technology and media consolidation have rendered the work of professional photojournalists a much more contingent endeavor. There is, of course, great value in the kind of rousing images that were taken by young women with cellphones during the heat of Egypt’s uprising and transmitted instantaneously around the planet. But, what of the men and women who consistently invested in firsthand photographic reporting over a number of years? The number of photojournalism images published by news organizations has shrunk dramatically in the shift of emphasis to more entertainment and lifestyle coverage. Without courageous and seasoned photojournalists actually going and talking to and taking pictures of people during the eruptions of wars and revolutions, our understanding of the world becomes more and more distorted.

“History’s Big Picture” exhibition at the Monroe Gallery of Photography is a gripping selection of images that brings home the power of visual storytelling. Hung chronologically from the 1930s to the present, these 58 photo images by the masters of 20th and 21st century photojournalism are predominately sobering. The overall impression of history and the big picture presented here tells a collective story of “Woe is us.”

More than a third of the images are from what is known as the “Golden Age” of photojournalism, the 1930s to the 1950s, when magazines including LIFE, Look and Sports Illustrated (USA), Paris Match, and the Berliner Illustrierte Zetung along with newspapers The Daily Mirror (London) and The New York Daily News built huge reputations and circulations based on photography by such artists as Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt and Margaret Bourke-White. The show opens with the work of these three celebrity photojournalists, including Eisenstaedt’s image of the self-satisfied architects of fascism, “The First Meeting of Mussolini and Hitler, Venice, June 1934,” along with an especially chilling image of the vampirish “Dr. Joseph Goebbels, Geneva, September, 1933,” the Reich’s minister of propaganda, himself a failed journalist and writer who organized the 1938 Kristallnacht for burning books and synagogues.

Capa’s “D-Day, Normandy, Omaha Beach, 1944″ is actually a great watery blur of a soldier swimming toward such massive implements for killing as fortified tank turrets and hundreds of thousands of land mines. Bourke-White is represented by two images –– the first captures three raggedy children in front of a raggedy sign that announces “Entering New Deal, Montana, 1936,” which was a mini-boomtown that faded away in the 1940s after the completion of a federally financed dam. Her second image is a riveting, crowded composition of “Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945″ each of them staring directly at us and still pressing forward across more than half a century from behind a metal fence on the day of their liberation. Scanning their figures and faces, it brings into question what the concepts of liberation and survival could mean to every one of these individuals and their descendants.

On view are five iconic images that were seen on the front pages of newspapers around the world the day after they were shot on location. In the case of Joe Rosenthal’s “Marines Raise the Flag on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945,” the U.S. government also printed 3.5 million posters for free distribution, and this image was certainly the template for Thomas E. Franklin’s raising of the flag by “Firefighters at Ground Zero, Sept 11, 2001.”

As the gallery notes, other justly famous images of the turbulent and troubled 1960s still “shake and disquiet us,” including Robert Jackson’s “Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, November 24, 1964,” Eddie Adams’ “Execution in Saigon, South Vietnam, February 1, 1968,” John Olson’s “U.S. Marines at battle of Hue, Vietnam, 1968,” and Bill Eppridge’s assassination of Bobby Kennedy in 1968.

Mixed in with these images that are part of the collective consciousness of baby boomers and assembled to celebrate the gallery’s 10th year in Santa Fe (after 14 years in Manhattan) are many images that are no less powerful but that have never before been exhibited on gallery walls. All of the conventions of fine art composition and framing are deployed by these masters in the heat of the “decisive moment.” Cameras are angled upward to frame such famous men as Winston Churchill, John F. Kennedy, and Martin Luther King Jr. as towering presences. Ground level shots with strong diagonals that signal things gone seriously awry including Eppridge’s splayed, spot-lit pieta of Bobby Kennedy attended by a waiter on bended knee, Loomis Dean’s tilting blasted “Mannequins after nuclear test at Yucca Flats, Nevada, May 1955,” and John Filo’s “May Vecchio grieving over slain student, Kent State, May 1970.” Unflinching, upright, straight-ahead perspective confers dignity and gives the viewer a place of privilege in such heart-wrenching situations as Ed Clark’s image of a tear-stained African American accordionist “Navy CPO Graham Jackson playing” a dirge for Franklin D. Roosevelt’s funeral cortege.

Sixties minimalism is used to great effect in Steve Schapiro’s austere and stripped-to-the-essential “White Women, Arkansas, 1961,” and in Eric Smith’s somber empty auditorium “Funeral for Iraqi War soldier, Lake Orion, Michigan, 2006.” Like Hiroshi Sugimoto’s late-1970s empty “Theatres” lit only by a streaming movie projector, Smith’s flag-draped, centrally illuminated casket with no one in attendance is an eerie metaphor, in this case, of offshore deaths that are intended to be kept out of sight and out of mind. In 2003, the Bush administration summarily banned all coverage of the bodies of U.S. troops returning from Iraq, a ban that was lifted in February 2009.

 Hadai Mizban: Iraq "War Games", Baghdad, Iraq, July 2, 2007 (c. AP)

That the gallery is almost always crowded with people talking about these images is due to a multitude of factors. The core reason is the consummate talent, quick response and fortitude of photojournalists working in often terrifying situations where their cameras make them prime targets. Are all those young viewers, who never had the opportunity to see them in print, a testimony to their thirst for truth, rather than entertainment? Certainly, it also has to do with the central location and welcoming open door of Monroe Gallery, a valuable addition to Santa Fe and a recognized international and persistent player in recovering and encouraging the best photojournalism.

In conjunction with this exhibition, the gallery is sponsoring an evening of conversation, next Friday, August 5, from 5 to 7 p.m., between two American photojournalists turned editors, Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo.

If you go WHAT: “History’s Big Picture”
WHERE: Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don GasparÂ
WHEN: Through Sept. 25.
HOURS: Monday through Saturday 10 a.m. to 6 p.m., Sunday 10 a.m. to 5 p.m.
CONTACT: 505.992-0800 or info@monroegallery.com

Carl Mydans:  Demonstrators in a Works Progress Administration (WPA) Strike, 1937 (c.Time Inc.)



Read more: ABQJournal Online » Photos Capture History http://www.abqjournal.com/main/2011/07/29/north/photos-capture-history.html#ixzz1TUabZmqX
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