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.


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Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan: New book explores the story behind the photograph that shamed America

Elizabeth and Hazel, September 4, 1957 Photo: Will Counts Collection, Indiana University Archives

One was trying to go to school; the other didn’t want her there. Together, Elizabeth Eckford and Hazel Bryan starred in one of the most memorable photographs of the Civil Rights era. But their story had only just begun.

Via the Telegraph
By David Margolick

12:01AM BST 09 Oct 2011

On her first morning of school, September 4 1957, Elizabeth Eckford’s primary concern was looking nice. Her mother had done her hair the night before; an elaborate two-hour ritual, with a hot iron and a hotter stove, of straightening and curling. Then there were her clothes. People in black Little Rock knew that the Eckford girls were expert seamstresses; practically everything they wore they made themselves, and not from the basic patterns of McCall’s but from the more complicated ones in Vogue. It was a practice borne of tradition, pride, and necessity: homemade was cheaper, and it spared black children the humiliation of having to ask to try things on in the segregated department stores downtown.

In the fall of 1957, Elizabeth was among the nine black students who had enlisted, then been selected, to enter Little Rock Central High School.

Central was the first high school in a major southern city set to be desegregated since the United States Supreme Court had ruled three years earlier in Brown vs Board of Education that separate and ostensibly equal education was unconstitutional. Inspired both by Thurgood Marshall, who had argued the case of plaintiff Oliver L Brown, and Clarence Darrow, Elizabeth wanted to become a lawyer, and she thought Central would help her realise that dream.

On the television as Elizabeth ate her breakfast, a newsman described large crowds gathering around Central. It was all her mother, Birdie, needed to hear. “Turn that thing off!” she shouted. Should anyone say something nasty at her, she counselled Elizabeth, pretend not to hear them. Or better yet, be nice, and put them to shame.

Lots of white people lined Park Street as Elizabeth headed towards the school. As she passed the Mobil station and came nearer, she could see the white students filtering unimpeded past the soldiers. To her, it was a sign that everything was all right. But as she herself approached, three Guardsmen, two with rifles, held out their arms, directing her to her left, to the far side of Park. picture.

When it comes down to it, Counts’s famous photograph of Elizabeth Eckford is really more of Hazel Bryan: it is on Hazel that the eyes land, and linger.

Despite the tricky lighting, her face is perfectly exposed: the early morning September sun shines on her like a spotlight. It hits her from the side, painting her face in a stark chiaroscuro that makes it look more demonic still. She’s caught mid-vowel, with her mouth gapingly, ferociously open. At that instant, and in perpetuity, Hazel Bryan, always the performer, has the stage completely to herself.

Others played their own small parts in the picture, but “the mouth” she later said, “was mine”. And dressing that morning as she had, trying to look all grown up and sexed up, she had masked how young she really was. She was only 15, but she would always be seen, and judged, as an adult.

The next morning, Elizabeth and Hazel landed on millions of doorsteps.

Elizabeth became, as Ted Poston of the New York Post put it, “probably the most widely known high school student in the whole United States”, with the unidentified white girl to her running a close second.

Attention, and commentary, came from abroad as well. “One Girl Runs Gauntlet of Hate”, shouted a headline in the Daily Express in London.

The Arkansas Gazette marvelled at how the events had united in their outrage the newspapers of the Vatican, the Kremlin and a country whose leader had snubbed Jesse Owens only 20 years earlier. The story and picture led off the Little Rock coverage in Paris Match.

Long-distance telephone calls for Elizabeth came into her grandfather’s store from Chicago, Detroit, New York, even Oklahoma. Though all of The Nine got letters, Elizabeth got far and away the most, as many as 50 a day.
Because she’d rarely been identified by name, Hazel got little mail. A few letters, all from the North, all critical, were sent to her care of Central. Hazel read them, found their critical tone surprising, then gave them little mind.
Hazel’s parents, though, found her sudden notoriety sufficiently alarming to pull her out of Central. As linked as she became to the Little Rock Nine, then, Hazel did not in fact spend a single day inside Central with any of them.

The initial reports from inside were encouraging. “The teachers are very nice. Nothing went wrong, there were no catcalls. I especially enjoyed my history and English classes,” Elizabeth reported after that first day.
“Everything will be all right, for the majority of the white students themselves are all right.” Soon, though, there were disquieting signs. On October 1, while walking down the hall, Elizabeth was struck from behind with a pencil. In gym class the next day, someone threw a rock at her. When a soldier asked who, the white students just laughed.

Elizabeth suffered disproportionately. Apart from being the most vulnerable, she was also the most symbolically potent: if only they could drive out the girl who had come to epitomise the Nine, the segregationists may have hoped, the others would quickly follow, and the whole integrationist edifice would crumble.
Elizabeth had to be coaxed into participating in the 40th anniversary celebrations in 1997, even though they promised to be the most glorious yet: President Bill Clinton would preside. Elizabeth gradually became involved, meeting planners of the visitor centre the National Park Service planned to open in the old Mobil station near the school.

Also involved in the commemorations was Elizabeth Jacoway of the University of Arkansas at Little Rock, who was writing a history of the schools crisis. Jacoway had interviewed dozens of participants, including Elizabeth (in 1994) and Hazel (in 1996). Having pondered Hazel’s face for decades, Jacoway had been expecting an uneducated hick and was surprised by how articulate and remorseful she was.

In the years after Little Rock, Hazel had become increasingly political, branching out into peace activism and social work. One programme focused on self-esteem for teenagers. She took black teenagers who rarely had left Little Rock on field trips, climbing Pinnacle Mountain and picking strawberries. And, putting her course work in child psychology to use, she counselled young unwed mothers, many of them black, on parenting skills.
All this do-gooding with blacks, her husband, Antoine, joked, was really her way of atoning for the picture. And maybe he was right. Her whole outlook towards black people had changed. At the Barnes & Noble in Little Rock, she perused the sections on black history. She read David Shipler’s study of black-white relations in America, A Country of Strangers, a book Elizabeth herself had helped inspire.

Someone had suggested that an entire wall of the new visitor centre be devoted to the photograph. But Jacoway had another idea: subordinating the original photograph to a contemporary picture of Elizabeth and Hazel together – one symbolising the racial progress Little Rock had made. Will Counts was thinking similar thoughts. Newly retired from a professorship at Indiana University, the photographer had returned to Arkansas to chronicle the changes at Central since 1957.

When Elizabeth cut the ribbon at the dedication of the new visitor centre on September 20, Counts looked on. Afterward, Jacoway gave him Hazel’s number. Later that day, he spoke to both women. They agreed to meet.
For a moment, the two women faced one another. Still imagining Hazel as a blonde, Elizabeth was taken a bit aback to behold a brunette. “Hi, I’ve always wanted to meet you,” Elizabeth told her. “You’re mighty brave to face the cameras again,” she told Hazel as the three visitors entered the house. Hazel found the remark puzzling: Elizabeth seemed to be warning her of risks she couldn’t foresee.

Counts had already scouted possible locations to shoot the pair. He was thinking not so much about making great art, but about making a point, about the power of human beings to grow, and to forgive. And these two women actually looked comfortable with each other; they weren’t just putting on a show. Watching it was, for him, a near-religious experience, one of the most thrilling moments in his life.

When the anniversary commemorations ended in late September of 1997, Elizabeth and Hazel prepared to go their very separate ways. But, as time passed, Hazel realised that she wasn’t quite ready to let go.
In mid-November, Hazel invited Elizabeth and two of her sister Anna’s grandchildren to her house. Then, later that month, came the poster signing.

A large crowd showed up. As for the poster itself, Hazel thought the original picture was too small: as much as she hated it, she believed it couldn’t and shouldn’t be hidden. Elizabeth had a different problem with it: she thought the title – “Reconciliation” — overstated; there was a big difference between that and forgiveness.
Their encounters gradually became more frequent, almost routine. Over the next several months, they went to a home and garden show, and bought daylilies and irises together. They shopped for fabrics together. They heard Maya Angelou read poetry together.

The two enrolled in a seminar on racial healing offered by Little Rock’s racial and cultural diversity commission. Discussing race relations in a group of 20 every Monday night for 12 weeks was a revelation to each: Elizabeth had never realised how paralysed by anger and hate she had been, and hoped to leech some of that rage. It seemed to work, and she came to look forward to each session.

As for Hazel, she was naive about how bitter some blacks were; here was a problem one couldn’t simply wish away, or eliminate with soothing words. She was also amazed by how little race history she knew: after one class, Elizabeth mentioned Strange Fruit, the anti-lynching song Billie Holiday had made famous, and, much to Elizabeth’s astonishment, Hazel knew nothing about either the song or the subject. The picture itself was never discussed. But their classmates were tickled to be sitting alongside two such famous antagonists and, week by week, watching them bond.

Quietly, though, some considered the rapprochement, however lovely in principle, a triumph of sentimentality, wishful thinking, and marketing over reality. They wondered how deep it went and how long it could last. In some segments of her own community, Elizabeth stood accused of whitewashing reality. “I have been surprised by the vitriol that some young blacks approach me with,” she told the BBC. “They feel like I’m saying that what happened, it’s all over with and there are no repercussions. They feel like I’m wiping away the past.”

Almost from the outset, Hazel encountered hostility from whites. Some doubted her sincerity; more resented it. Soon, and most seriously, tensions developed with Elizabeth. Novelty and companionability, excitement and relief had propelled them along for a time.

But strains soon surfaced. The source was Elizabeth, and it was predictable, for she had always been the harder sell. Her usual wariness, vigilance, and perfectionism could be kept at bay only so long. As the two shared more time and platforms, Elizabeth spotted what she perceived to be discrepancies, inconsistencies and evasions, in Hazel’s story.

The fissure was painfully apparent that March, 18 months into their relationship, when they met Linda Monk, a lawyer turned writer who hoped to write a book about the women. She recorded some of their sessions, and those taped conversations captured how Elizabeth’s mood had changed.

“After you saw [Counts’s] pictures in the paper, you don’t remember how you felt or what people close to you talked about?” she asked Hazel incredulously at one point. ‘‘There wasn’t much conversation about it, really,’’ replied Hazel. What she’d done that morning had been so banal — “just hamming up and being recognised – getting attention” – that it hadn’t been worth remembering, she insisted. Maybe she had a block. But Elizabeth wasn’t buying it.

Elizabeth had forgiven Hazel, but that forgiveness, she concluded, had been obtained under false pretences: Hazel hadn’t fully owned up to her past. For her part, Hazel felt under assault. “It’s very hard for me to sit there and listen to you, Elizabeth,” she said weakly. “It’s very hard for me… and if there’s anything I could give you… if I could take it back… if I could…” She began to sob.

In the spring of 1999 I travelled to Little Rock and arranged to meet Elizabeth and Hazel at a barbecue. Afterwards we went to Hazel’s house and talked some more. It was, I thought, a friendly chat. Elizabeth did not let on that she and Hazel were having problems; the two of them were “very close”, she said. They talked a lot, she went on, maybe once a week. Hazel was more forthright about where things stood between them, but still oblique. “I think she still… at times we have a little… well, the honeymoon is over and now we’re getting to take out the garbage,” she said.

Early in 2000 Cathy Collins, the sociologist who had conducted the racial healing seminar Elizabeth and Hazel had attended, invited them for catfish at a local restaurant. Collins planned to write her dissertation on the two of them, and wanted to discuss the project. She had picked up no bad vibes that evening, but Elizabeth had: Hazel seemed very much on edge. Her instincts were sound. Hazel had had enough. They would no longer see each other. Quietly, unceremoniously, their great experiment in racial rapprochement was over.

The “reconciliation” poster was popular enough to warrant another printing. Elizabeth let them go ahead; it was her way of supporting the place. Now, though, she insisted that it carry a caveat, one she devised herself. Soon, a small sticker, resembling the surgeon general’s warning on cigarette packs, appeared in the upper right hand corner. It was gold, and relatively inconspicuous, particularly against Central’s ochre bricks: “True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly acknowledge our painful, but shared, past.” – Elizabeth Eckford.

The message puzzled Hazel, who had not been consulted about either the reprinting or the disclaimer. As far as she was concerned, ‘‘acknowledging the painful but shared past’’ was just what she had been trying to do. She’d have liked to have had her own sticker, one that said, ‘‘True reconciliation can occur only when we honestly let go of resentment and hatred, and move forward.’’ The poster continued to hang in the office of Central’s principal, Nancy Rousseau, though more as an ideal than a reflection of reality.

“I just had hoped that I could show this picture and say, ‘This happened, and that happened, and now…’ and there is no ‘now’,” she said. “And that makes me sad. It makes me sad for them, it makes me sad for the future students at our school, and for the history books, because I’d like a happy ending. And we don’t have that.”

‘Elizabeth and Hazel’ by David Margolick (Yale University Press, £18.99) is available from Telegraph Books for £16.99 plus £1.25p p and p; 0844 871 1516; books.telegraph.co.uk

Continued:  Related Article

An American Girl In Italy - by David Schonauer

Ruth Orkin: An American Girl in Italy, 1951

The 60th anniverary of the making of a truly iconic photograph was recently celebrated, resulting in numerous news articles and an appearance by the subject of the photograph on the TODAY Show. David Schonauer has written on a variety of topics for Atlantic Monthly, the New York Times, Worth, Mademoiselle, Outside, and other publications. He is the former editor in chief of American Photo magazine, and here is his take.

Via The Big Picture

A Journal of the Visual Culture from David Schonauer

 

Photographer Ruth Orkin’s “American Girl in Italy” is probably one of the most widely known and loved images from the 20^th century. Orkin, who died in 1985, took the picture a little more than 50 years ago, on August 21, 1951, in the Piazza della Repubblica in Florence, a day after meeting a 23-year-old American woman who was traveling through Europe alone. Her name was Ninalee Allen, known to her friends by a childhood nickname, “Jinx.” A recent graduate of Sarah Lawrence College, she was spending the summer on a great adventure. Her carefree spirit—as well as her beauty and commanding six-foot height, caught Orkin’s attention. She thought she might take a color picture of Allen near the Arno River, which she could sell to a newspaper for a few dollars. And so the stage was set for a remarkable moment and a remarkable photograph.

The picture has beguiled and confounded the world since it was printed as a poster in the 1970s. It has been seen as a symbol of female powerlessness in a male-dominated world, which is not what Orkin intended. It also has been the subject of debate because Orkin in fact shot it twice—after recording the reaction of the men in the Piazza when Allen walked through, she asked the young woman to walk through again. It was the second entrance that became the famous photo. Did she play too fast and loose with the truth? Does it matter?

I recently wrote about the photograph for the October issue of Smithsonian magazine. (Go here to read my piece.) As part of my research, I went to the best primary source I could find—the American Girl herself. Ninalee Allen is now Ninalee Craig, age 83 and living in Toronto. She is lively, lovely, and very certain that Orkin’s picture reflects the truth of what happened that day. Here is a excerpt of my interview with her.

Exhibition Celebrates 2011 Lucie Award for Lifetime Achievement in Photojournalism Recipient Bill Eppridge

©Bill Eppridge:  sign in rear window of car in Philadelphia, Mississippi, 1964

Monroe Gallery of Photography is honored to announce an extensive exhibition of more than 50 important photographs by Bill Eppridge, recipient of the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism. The exhibit opens with a reception on Friday, September 30, from 5 - 7 PM; and continues through November 20. 

The Lucie Awards is the annual gala ceremony honoring the greatest achievements in photography. The photography community from countries around the globe will pay tribute to Bill Eppridge, who will receive the 2011 Lucie Award for Achievement in Photojournalism at a special ceremony October 24 at Lincoln Center in New York.

Bill Eppridge is one of the most accomplished photojournalists of the Twentieth Century and has captured some of the most significant moments in American history: he has covered wars, political campaigns, heroin addiction, the arrival of the Beatles in the United States, Vietnam, Woodstock, the summer and winter Olympics, and perhaps the most dramatic moment of his career - the assassination of Senator Robert Kennedy in Los Angeles. Over the last 50 years, his work has appeared in numerous publications, including National Geographic, Life, and Sports Illustrated; and has been exhibited in museums throughout the world.

 For the first time, this exhibition presents many of Eppridge's most important photo essays together, including:

 The Beatles: Bill Eppridge really didn't know who the Beatles were, but "One morning my boss said, 'Look, we've got a bunch of British musicians coming into town. They're called the Beatles.'" Eppridge was at John F. Kennedy airport on February 7, 1964 awaiting the arrival of The Beatles. He continued to photograph The Beatles that day, and over the next several days. He was invited to come up to their room at the Plaza Hotel and "stick with them." He was with them in Central Park and at the Ed Sullivan Show for both the rehearsal and the historic performance. He rode the train to Washington, D.C. with them for the concert at the Washington Coliseum, and photographed their Carnegie Hall performance on February 12, 1964.

©Bill Eppridge: Beatle Fans scramble for Jelly Beans, Washington Coliseum, 1964

"These were four very fine young gentlemen, and great fun to be around," Eppridge recalls. After he introduced himself to Ringo, who consulted with John, the group asked what he wanted them to do while being photographed for Life. "I'm not going to ask you to do a thing," was Eppridge's reply. "I just want to be there." An exhibit of Eppridge's Beatles photographs has been touring since 2001, and was seen by over 2 million people at the Smithsonian Museum.

Mississippi Burning: The James Cheney Murder: In late June of 1964, three civil rights workers in Mississippi went missing, kidnapped by Klu Klux Klansmen. One man was black, the other two were white. Their names were James Cheney, Andrew Goodman, and Michael Schwerner. Bill Eppridge arrived in Neshoba County shortly after the bodies of James Chaney, Michael Schwerner and Andrew Goodman were pulled from the muck of an earthen dam on August 4, 1964. There are no pictures of the crime, just the brutal aftermath and the devastating grief and sorrow brought upon a family.

©Bill Eppridge: Mrs. Chaney and young Ben, James Chaney funeral, Meridian, Mississippi, 1964

 In 1967, eighteen men faced federal charges of civil rights violations in the slayings of Chaney, Schwerner and Goodman. Seven were convicted by an all-white jury, eight were acquitted and three were released after jurors deadlocked. The state of Mississippi prosecuted no one for 38 years. But in 2005—after six years of new reporting on the case by Jerry Mitchell of the Jackson Clarion-Ledger—a sawmill operator named Edgar Ray Killen was indicted on charges of murder.

On June 21, 2005, exactly 41 years after the three men were killed, a racially integrated jury, without clear evidence of Killen's intent, found him guilty of manslaughter instead. Serving three consecutive 20-year terms, he is the only one of six living suspects to face state charges in the case.

Robert F. Kennedy: One of Eppridge’s most memorable and poignant essays was his coverage of Senator Robert F. Kennedy, first in 1966, and then again on the road with RFK during the 1968 presidential campaign. On June 5, 1968, at the Ambassador Hotel in Los Angeles, he was instructed by his boss to "stay as close as you can to Bobby". Kennedy assured Eppridge that he would be part of his immediate group, which meant that wherever the Democratic candidate went, Eppridge wouldn't be far behind. His photograph of the wounded Senator on the floor of the Ambassador Hotel kitchen seconds after he was shot has been described as a modern Pieta. Among the thoughts Eppridge had at that moment was a very loud and clear one: "You are not just a photojournalist, you're a historian."

"I believe our world is at a time right now in which it should be documented completely. If we can influence people with photographs, maybe we'll be able to maintain our planet." -- Bill Eppridge

 View the exhibition here.

Art Market Watch: The Market For Ansel Adams' "Moonrise, Hernandez"

 Ansel AdamsMoonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico
1941
gelatin silver print, mounted, ca. 14 x 19 in.
$609,600
Sotheby's New York
Oct. 17, 2006


Via Artnet.com

 by Daniel Grant

Driving back to Santa Fe, N.M., on Oct. 31, 1941, after what had been a disappointing day for picture-taking, photographer Ansel Adams (1902-84) brought his car to an abrupt stop, yelling to his companions to bring him his tripod, exposure meter and other photographic equipment so that he could take what would become one of the most famous images in fine art photography, Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico.

Continue to artnet.com for everything you need to know about Moonrise.

“This image encapsulates his career,”  Christopher Mahoney, senior vice-president in Sotheby’s photographs department, said, “and we can see in it his changing ideas and esthetic style.”

The 60th Anniversary of the "American Girl in Italy" photograph by Ruth Orkin

August 22, 2011 marks the 60th anniversary of the photograph “American Girl in Italy by Ruth Orkin (1921-1985). The subject of this famous photograph is Ninalee Craig (then known as Jinx Allen), who now lives in Toronto.

The two were talking about their shared experiences traveling alone as young single women, when Orkin had an idea. “Come on,” she said, “lets go out and shoot pictures of what it’s really like.” In the morning, while the Italian women were inside preparing lunch, Jinx gawked at statues, asked military officials for directions, fumbled with lire and flirted in cafes while Orkin photographed her. Orkin’s best known image, “American Girl in Italy” was also created as part of this series.

Ruth Orkin was 17 when she took a cross-country trip by herself, bicycling and hitchhiking from her home in Los Angeles to New York, snapping pictures along the way. She later moved to New York, where this spirit of adventure continued. She  photographed Tanglewood’s summer music festival, honed her craft in nightclubs, joined the Photo League, and with her first published story in Look magazine, became “a fullfledged photojournalist.” In 1951, Life sent her on assignment to Israel and from there she went to Italy.

Exhibition: Stephen Bulger Gallery

A PHOTO EDITOR: GALLERIST INTERVIEW

Photograph by Irving Haberman

Via APhotoEditor

A Photo Editor (APE) is Rob Haggart, the former Director of Photography for Men's Journal and Outside Magazine. We count on the site as a daily must-read.

Interview With Gallerist Sidney Monroe
July 15, 2011
Contributor Jonathan Blaustein interviews Sidney Monroe owner of the Monroe Gallery in Santa Fe, NM.

JB: How did you get involved in the business?

SM: It was accidental, almost. After college, I worked at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. Then, I started working in contemporary galleries in New York.

JB: Were you in the photo department at the Met?

SM: I was not. I was in the retail department. It was a fascinating time, because it was at the time of the Tutankhamun exhibition, and it was the first time they put a satellite retail operation in the exhibition, as opposed to just in the gift shop. It spurred their entire retail model. I can’t remember the numbers, but in the three years I was there, sales went from like $3 million to $50 million, because of the expansion of the retail model. This was before they had the retail stores in airports and such.

JB: So is this in the 80′s?

SM: This is in the early 80′s, yeah. I had been a business and economics major in college, and always had an interest in the arts. My circle of friends was always artistically inclined. I was completely talentless…

JB: Entirely, perfectly talentless?

SM: Entirely talentless, but I was always in a circle of creative people. When I took that job at the Met, it was a beginning opportunity in the retail department as they were expanding. Within a year, I became a manger of the book shop. In the book store, you could take anything you wanted to read, you could purchase at at discount, and I immersed myself in learning about art. The Metropolitan Museum of Art is an incredible place.

JB: It’s my favorite museum in the world. I studied art more there, when I lived in New York, than even in graduate school.

SM: Anyone who’s been there knows you can spend hours, days wandering, and still not see it all. And I had access to the catacombs, because there’s storage under Central Park. You go down in there, and there’s a Rodin sculpture with a tarp over it. Crates with you can’t imagine what might be in there.

JB: I would kill for a chance to see that. If any of your people end up reading this, I want a secret tour.

SM: I’m sure it’s all changed. Especially in a Post-9/11 world. This was the 80′s, things were very loose, and it was a great training ground.

JB: So you moved from there to the photo gallery world?

SM: The contemporary gallery world.

JB: Where?

                                                     Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt

SM: I started at a gallery that’s no longer in existence, and quite frankly I can’t remember the name. Then I went to The Circle Gallery, which was a commercial galley specializing in contemporary prints. For a while, they were kind of legendary for having a retail model for a gallery, opening different branches in other cities. That’s where I cut my teeth in the art business. That led to an opportunity to meet Alfred Eisenstadt. He was in his 80′s, and had done some museum exhibits. But he had never done a gallery/selling exhibit. Somehow he had gotten in contact with the owner of The Circle Gallery. I was then the director, and became involved in talking with Eisenstadt about doing an exhibit. My wife-to-be and I got to go up to the Time-Life Building, and sit across from Eisie at his desk. We were both in our 20′s, he was in his 80′s, and it was like a lightbulb went off. I was sitting across from a man who has witnessed history.That’s when I got hooked. We did this exhibit, it traveled nationally, and was huge at the time. It was on CNN, Good Morning America, all the morning talk shows.

JB: Had any of the LIFE photographers shown their work in a gallery context before that?

SM: Not so much. Time-Life had a small gallery in the building, and they would routinely do exhibits for the photographers, but nowhere near the scale of a public gallery. Eisie was a very, very smart man. Of all the LIFE photographers, he published dozens of books. He was ahead of his time in that he understood that photojournalism should be more broadly available to the public, as opposed to just existing in a magazine. I firmly believe this drove the last 10 years of his life. He worked on supervising his prints, traveling exhibitions, doing interviews, meeting the public, from the time he was 85 until he died at 96.

That set off a spark for me, and within a couple of years after that, I had two partners and we opened a gallery in Soho on Grand St. It was just devoted to photography, with an emphasis on photojournalism. That gallery opened in the fall of 1996. We did several shows with LIFE magazine photographers, and presented the first ever exhibition from the archives of Margaret Bourke-White’s estate. Fast-forwarding, after 9/11, being in that location was no longer viable for commerce. My wife and I decided to leave Manhattan, come to Santa Fe, and start over.

JB: Why did you choose Santa Fe?

SM: It’s a good question, and we’re just realizing that we’ve been here 10 years, now, and it’s gone by very quickly. We couldn’t find a location in Manhattan quick enough to relocate. The location we had on Grand St was the quintessential Soho gallery. Cast-iron columns, 16 ft ceilings, everything you would want in a beautiful gallery. Already the migration had already started towards Chelsea. We looked, and all that would be available, if you weren’t one of the big players, would be on the 6th, 7th, 8th floor of a building in Chelsea, and I didn’t like that model. We have always believed in photojournalism, and that it needs to be seen by the public. We’re very passionate about spreading the message, so the public is integral to what we do.

We’d visited New Mexico, and I have family roots here. We knew there was a vibrant art scene in Santa Fe. We did some research, and depending on the data, it was either number two or three art market behind Manhattan. Quite frankly, we took a leap of faith. 9/11 happened. We decided in October, we moved over Christmas break, and we opened the gallery in Santa Fe in April of 2002. We honed down very tightly on photojournalism. That’s all we’ve focused on showing here.

JB: Are there other galleries now that have followed your lead and do what you do, or do you still feel like you’ve got a unique position in the market?

Photograph by Bill Eppridge

SM: I think we accidentally found a unique niche. Accidentally, because it followed from a passion. Something sparked, and that’s the direction I went in, and at the time nobody else was really doing it. Now there have always been some photo galleries that show some photojournalism in with their other programming, but to my knowledge, there is still nobody doing pure photojournalism, and that’s really become what we’re known for. Both within the collecting and museum community, and the public gallery-going community as well.

JB: I’m sitting here in the gallery, surrounded by artifacts of American history, and I know you said already that you developed a relationship with Alfred Eisenstadt, and that was the catalyst for the gallery, but how did you develop relationships with the other photographers whose work you show? Especially because I’ve got to imagine you’re working with Estates, because many of these people have passed on.

SM: That’s correct.

–(editor’s note: Right here, we were interrupted by a strange woman who took the time to complain that there were no photographs of dancers on the wall. She felt slighted. Mr. Monroe patiently answered her questions, and treated her with respect, despite the fact that she was behaving like a complete nutbar.)

SM: Partly, it was fortunate timing. When we began, many of these photographers were still alive. Eisenstadt introduced us to many of his colleagues at LIFE magazine, Carl Mydans was still living, as were many of the other LIFE photographers. It’s almost like a fraternity. One of the things we’ve been so passionate about is getting these photographers to make prints while they’re still alive. As a photojournalist, unlike a lot of other photographers, they never considered making prints during their lifetime. They were on assignment. They had a job to to. They got their assignment from LIFE or LOOK or whomever, they went out in the field, shot their work, sent their film back, and chances are they never even saw it. It was edited, and used or not used in a magazine.

When we met some of these other photographers, particularly with Carl Mydans, and we suggested that they could go back through the work and see it fresh. He’s seen it in a magazine, or a book, but to sit down with a negative and a printer…the printer would say, “Carl, you can make it this big or that big, we use different paper, crop it this way or that.” It opened up a whole new possibility for them in doing their work. We’ve met these photographers, we’ve encouraged them to do this, but a lot of times they’re hesitant. It’s just not something that’s in their thought process.

JB: Then. But probably we would say that’s changed.

Photograph by Eddie Adams

SM: That has changed. And now you get a lot more photographers who say, “I want to do what he did.” It really was like a fraternity, and one by one, we either knew about photographers, sometimes we’d talk to them and they’d be resistant. I knew Eddie Adams way back when in New York. Eddie was infamous for refusing galleries. I never really approached him, but I’d always talk to him about it. Within a few months of his passing, his wife came to us and asked us to represent the Estate. It’s a combination of people coming to us, people we’ve put out feelers to, and it’s a very close-knit community. Almost all of our photographers are colleagues of some sort. Sometimes to almost a humorous point. We did an exhibit once, and a photographer found out he was hanging next to another photographer, and he said, “Son-of-a-bitch, I hated him then, and I don’t want to hang next to him in your gallery.” So we moved the exhibit around a little bit.

JB: You did?

SM: We did. My wife likes to say “We work for them.” And that’s true. A lot of times they’re elderly, and we feel very privileged. It’s important to get their work represented, particularly while they’re alive, and to get prints made that will represent a legacy for the future.

JB: You developed a relationship with a network of photographers who knew one another, and as your reputation built, they came to want to work with you. But what about the collectors themselves? How did you develop a relationship with a network of people who wanted to buy these prints.

SM: It started very innocently. This is what we were passionate about. This is what we put on the walls. This is what we want to talk about. And it was slow going in the beginning. We had many times where we had exhibits up, and the established photo collector would be like, “Gee, I don’t know about your gallery,” and then they’d look at it, and they’d say, “But this is photojournalism?” And we were like, “Yeah, isn’t it great?” A lot of what we’ve done, is that we’ve educated people about photojournalism.
Moving to Santa Fe was very liberating, in a way, because in the New York art world, there’s a tremendous pressure. What’s hot? What’s the next big thing? More so in the art world, but it does also permeate into the photo world. So seeing old history on the wall isn’t very sexy. Moving to Santa Fe, there’s more freedom, it seems, of peoples’ perceptions of art in general. We’ve tried to create an environment where the photographs speak for themselves.

JB: So most of your collectors have been into the space? Are most of the people local to Santa Fe?

Photograph by Steve Schapiro

SM: No. We have a very wide base. Fortunately, having been in business in Manhattan for so many years, a lot of those clients follow us. Of course, so much can be done in the virtual world now. It doesn’t replace the experience, but certainly they can follow the imagery. We also do photo fairs in New York and Los Angeles. Often, it comes from the first conversation you have with a person about why they’re having a visceral reaction to a particular image. Being complete academic nerds, we can recite everything that was ever vaguely relevant about a particular photographer. It’s about cultivating relationships and knowledge. You touched on the retail model. I believe it’s an important model for a photography gallery. And by retail, I don’t mean retail selling.

JB: Well, that was my next question. Because we’re in downtown Santa Fe, and during the course of this interview, I’d say 25 people have already been into the gallery, and an additional 40 have been looking at pictures through the window. I think some people believe that people come in and buy things off the wall, and other people think that’s a fantasy. I was hoping we might be able to address, from your own standpoint, how it actually works.

SM: Personally, our goal is to spread the gospel of photojournalism, so getting the work seen by the public is critical. It’s a part of what we do, and another part is to educate. That doesn’t mean we preach, but I’m available to anyone who wants to ask questions, as we saw earlier, from mundane to serious. There’s no screening process of who gets to talk to me.

JB: Is that because we’re in Santa Fe? I wrote some things that were critical of some of the galleries in Chelsea for that reason. The approachability factor is nil. Here you’re talking about the fact that you’re almost perfectly approachable.

SM: That was our posture in New York. It’s just who I am and the way I work. It is bothersome sometimes, but that’s just the way it is. And I have to say that it has resulted in some incredibly long-term relationships with very important collectors. I think it’s a thing in the art world, and everybody has their model, and they can do it the way they want. But by design, I want the work to be seen, I want people to be able to ask questions. The retail model for us is that we’re open to the public, and we’re here to show photography. Both in New York and Santa Fe, we’re connected to schools, workshops, communities. Santa Fe is wonderful because of the Santa Fe Workshops, and Center as well. Many instructors bring their classes in here.

JB: You’re talking about retail as a way to engage with the public and have an exhibition space that enables the work to be seen. I’m curious, a bit, about the alternative way of viewing the concept of retail. The idea that people are going to walk in off the street, buy something off the wall, and take it home with them. As opposed to sales coming through built-up relationships over time. How often do you find that members of the public cross over to become collectors, as opposed to the public being appreciators?

SM: It’s hard to quantify, but obviously it’s a very small percentage. But just yesterday, a young couple came in and asked about a Margaret Bourke-White photograph we had exhibited seven years ago. They got married here seven years ago, and came back again on vacation. They asked about the photograph and they bought it.

JB: So it happens, but it’s the exception. It’s not the basis of your business.

SM: No. It’s not the basis of our business.

JB: Nor could it be?

SM: No. Nor could it be. Or should it be.

JB: Right, but in a sense, we’re talking about the exhibition divested from commerce. The exhibition is about getting the work seen, which is not that different from a museum or a public space.

SM: That’s exactly right. A lot of people, as they exit the gallery, say this is like a museum.

JB: As you said before, by design. You could be a private dealer with a small office, if you wanted to be.

Photograph by John Filo

SM: Absolutely. And we curate based upon our agenda, which is to tell a story. A lot of times, you get comments from the public, “How do you know which one’s going to sell?” Well, that never even enters into the equation. And on the flip side, there are a lot of times where we have controversial pictures that upset people, and they say, “Why do you put that on the wall?” Because it’s part of the story. It’s very important.

JB: It’s a perfect opportunity to ask, you’re opening your big summer exhibition called “History’s Big Picture” on July 1st. It’s not on the wall today, so I thought you might be able to tell us a bit about that.

SM: Curating is always interesting, because you’re juggling dozens of ideas. It occurred to us that this year is our 10th year anniversary in Santa Fe, during which time we built our photojournalism focus. And it occurred to us that we’ve got this incredible stable of photojournalism that we could curate from and make “History’s Big Picture.” The hardest part is editing, because we could do ten exhibits called “History’s Big Picture” and not duplicate any images.

JB: Really? How big an archive do you have? Given what you just said, how many pictures do you have access to?

SM: Jonathan, I couldn’t even tell you…

JB: Thousands?

SM: Thousands. We have archives in the gallery, we have off-site location here and in Manhattan, and we have our photographers who maintain archives.

JB: Sure. I interrupted, but you were talking about “History’s Big Picture.” As a curator, that’s kind of a broad theme. What did that mean to you?

SM: The pictures that tell the story of history. You have to edit your timeline for history, of course.

JB: American history?

SM: Primarily history as it relates to America. We chose 1930 as the starting point, and wanted to come as close to the present as possible. We have several images from 2006, 2007 and 2008.

JB: Am I correct that for the recent work, you’re showing Nina Berman’s pictures?

SM: We are.

JB: At APE, we spoke to her earlier this year. She’s fantastic. How did you come to get her work in the show?

SM: She is fantastic. She’s somebody I’ve admired. For photojournalists today, they’re obviously working in a challenging environment, and a changed one as far as the media goes. In the heyday, you had vehicles like LIFE or LOOK, where that work was published, the photographer became known, and the public saw the work. In today’s media world, getting images shown is very challenging.

JB: You mean getting images seen?

SM: Yes, getting images seen.

JB: It’s a distinction we could probably talk about for an hour, but I think most people reading this will probably know the difference.

SM: Of course. The visual clutter that’s prevalent today. And the change of the economy of scale of the media. So Nina is one of the many contemporary photojournalists that I’ve known about, followed and admired. I wasn’t sure how we could show her work and do it justice, but in the context of this exhibit, I felt that we’ve got to have it. She was so gracious and accommodating, and it was an honor to have five of her photographs in the exhibit. We’ve got two from “Homeland Security” and three from the “Marine Wedding” series.

JB: Including the Ty Zeigler wedding portrait?

SM: Including the wedding portrait.

JB: Which I saw on the wall in New York last year, which led to the interview with Nina. So we’ve come full circle. That picture will now be on the wall here in Santa Fe all summer long.

SM: And I’m prepared. That picture’s going to elicit a lot of, I don’t know if controversy is the right word. But in the context of a public exhibition, in summer, which is high traffic tourist season in Santa Fe, the good side is obviously this show will get a lot of exposure. And the other side is that there are some very difficult photographs in this exhibit. But that’s history. That’s reality.

JB: Sure. Well, I know that everyone hates to be asked what’s your favorite, or what’s the best, or this or that. But I thought maybe if I put you on the spot, you might be able to pull out some old-school war story from back in the day that somebody told you that you still tell at dinner parties when you’ve had four glasses of wine.

SM: There’s a few.

JB: I’m sure there are many. But can you give us one?

Photograph by Alfred Eisenstaedt

SM: One of my all time favorites happens to be about Eisenstadt. This was at an opening for one of Eisie’s shows. He was a small man, and he was very confident of his success, shall we say. So this was at a big opening, and lots of big collectors were invited. I had a collector who’d bought several of Eisie’s pictures, and he said he’d like to meet Eisie. I said absolutely, and he asked if his son could come too. I said “Sure,” and made the introduction. Eisie was always very gracious, but he didn’t like to hang out with people too much. So the man said, “Mr. Eisenstadt, I just bought my son a camera, and I told him, now you can take pictures like Eisenstadt.” And Eisenstadt just stopped and gave him this stare, and he said, “My dear sir, I have ten fingers, and I cannot play the piano like Horowitz.” At that point, I said thank you very much and escorted him away.

JB: It’s kind of dry.

SM: It’s very dry. There’s the face value that says anybody can take pictures. And it’s a very good point, especially nowadays, where everybody’s a photographer. It’s the topic du jour now. I’ve seen so many articles about it.

JB: Me too, so we don’t even have to go there. But if you don’t mind, I’d like to ask one more question. What advice would you give to someone who wanted to get into this part of the business? What do you think is the pathway into the gallery industry in 2011?

SM: First and foremost, it has to be your passion. Unfortunately in the world we’re in today, a lot of people glamorize the business. They think it would be so glamorous to have a fancy gallery, and it has to be your passion.

JB: So not everyone gets to blow lines with Naomi Campbell?

SM: No. But we had a great exhibit back in New York with a good friend of mine named Mick Rock, who’s really become quite successful now. He was known as the man who shot the 70′s. He did all the rock and roll photography. He was Bowie’s photographer and Lou Reed’s photographer. I got to know him, and I convinced him to do an exhibit. So when we did the show, we had Bowie, and Iman and Lou Reed hanging out. I would always say, “I’m never going to get rid of that desk chair,” because Bowie and Lou Reed sat in that chair.

But that’s not why you get into the business, is my point. If you’re passionate about the work, it will be rewarding no matter what, because you’re doing what you enjoy. And that’s the bottom line. It’s a job, and it’s work. It’s a fabulous job, and it’s fabulous work, but it’s a job.

If you’ve got the passion, the first step is to find your photographers. There’s a partnership between a gallery and the photographer/artist. You’re in it together. It’s not one or the other, it’s both. When I sell a print and call up the photographer to tell them, that’s a celebration we share. The next thing that follows is the relationships with your clients. And then you take it from there.

by A Photo Editor on July 15, 2011

CELEBRATING 10 YEARS IN SANTA FE

Monroe Gallery of Photography, 112 Don Gaspar, is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating the gallery's ten years in Santa Fe. "History's Big Picture" opens with a public reception tonight, Friday, July 1, 5 - 7 PM. The exhibition of 60 iconic photographs continues through September 25.

We are very pleased to welcome Eric Draper as our special guest Friday evening. Draper served as Special Assistant to the President and White House Photographer for President George W. Bush. Draper documented the entire eight years of the Bush administration and directed the conversion of the White House Photo Office from film to digital, and two of his photographs from September 11, 2001 are featured in the exhibition.

Among the exhibition’s many recognizable images:

Robert Capa: D-Day, Omaha Beach, Normandy, 6th June, 1944. Capa is perhaps the best known of all World War II combat photographers. For a split second this short exposure places us shoulder to shoulder with the soldiers of the 16th regiment landing at Omaha Beach. Epitomizing Capa’s remark that "...if your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough” the photograph of the GI’s struggling through the churning surf has survived as the definitive image of the Normandy invasion.

Joe Rosenthal: Marines Raise the Flag on Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945: It had been four days since the AP's Joe Rosenthal landed on the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. The hail of Japanese fire had not let up. During one of the bloodiest battles of World War II, U.S. Marines captured Mount Suribachi, a volcanic peak on the southern tip of the island. Jubilant, they raised a flag and Rosenthal made a photograph that has been called "the greatest photograph of all time".

Robert Jackson: Jack Ruby Shoots Lee Harvey Oswald, November 24, 1964
When Oswald was brought out, Jackson raised his camera as Jack Ruby stepped in front of him. Jackson described the moment: “My first reaction was, ‘This guy’s getting in my way.’ Ruby took two steps and fired—and I guess I fired about the same time.”



Eddie Adams’ Execution in Saigon, South Vietnam, February 1, 1968
This is one of the most memorable images in the history of war photography. We are witnessing an individual’s fear a fraction of a second before the loss of his life. Adam’s photograph appeared on the front page of The New York Times the day after it was taken and was syndicated worldwide, mobilizing public opinion against the Vietnam War.

Nina Berman's photo essay "Marine Wedding" is a series of unstaged photos of Sergeant Ty Ziegel, then 24, back home as he prepares for his wedding to his high school sweetheart Renee Klein, then 21. Ziegel survived a suicide bomber attack in Iraq, but was severely disfigured and needed 50 reconstructive operations. Exhibited at the 2010 Whitney Biennial, the photographs are a stark reminder that these wars have consequences and many of our sons and daughters are having their lives permanently altered in faraway lands. Berman has said in interviews that she started photographing disabled veterans soon after the war began mainly because she didn’t see anyone else doing so.

Please join us tonight, Friday, July 1, from 5 - 7 PM. The exhibition continues through September 25, 2011.

--Former Life, People, and Time Inc. editors Richard Stolley and Hal Wingo will lead a discussion on the impact of Photojournalism through history at a special salon at the gallery during the exhibition August 5, from 5 - 7 PM.

Monroe Gallery of Photography was founded by Sidney S. Monroe and Michelle A. Monroe. Building on more than five decades of collective experience, the gallery specializes in classic black and white photography with an emphasis on humanist and photojournalist imagery. The gallery also represents a select group of contemporary and emerging photographers and exhibits nationally at prestigious Photography Fairs. Monroe Gallery was the recipient of the 2010 Alfred Eisenstaedt Award for Excellence in Photojournalism.

HISTORY'S BIG PICTURE

Joe Rosenthal: Marines of the 28th Regiment of the 5th Division Raise the American Flag Atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, 1945 ©AP




HISTORY'S BIG PICTURE

July 1 through September 25, 2011


Monroe Gallery of Photography is pleased to present an exhibition celebrating the gallery's ten years in Santa Fe: "History's Big Picture"; July 1 through September 25, 2011. The exhibition opens with a public reception Friday, July 1, from 5 - 7 PM.

On April 19, 2002, Monroe Gallery of Photography presented "LIFE Magazine Master Photojournalists" for its first exhibition in Santa Fe. Over the past ten years and over more than 55 exhibitions, Monroe Gallery has consistently exhibited the masters of 20th and 21st Century Photojournalism.

"History's Big Picture" mines the depth and breadth of Monroe Gallery's archives and is combined with new, never-before exhibited photojournalism masterpieces, from the early 1920's to the present day. "History's Big Picture" highlights both the significant and the idiosyncratic and embodies how Monroe Gallery has helped shape the understanding and appreciation of photojournalism locally and worldwide. In March of 2011, the respected E-Photo Newsletter named Monroe Gallery "the most influential gallery devoted to photojournalism".

Photographers in this exhibition have captured dramatic moments in time and illustrate the power of photography to inform, persuade, enlighten and enrich the viewer's life. Universally relevant, they reflect the past, the present, and the changing times. These unforgettable images are imbedded in our collective consciousness; they form a sort of shared visual heritage for the human race, a treasury of significant memories. Many of the photographs featured in this exhibition not only moved the public at the time of their publication, and continue to have an impact today, but set social and political changes in motion, transforming the way we live and think.

Photographs in the exhibition relate to events that represent the culmination of a development or the eruption of social forces. Looking at the pictorial documentation of such revolutionary events we often get the impression that we are feeling the pulse of history more intensively than at other times. Although often not beautiful, or easy, they are images that shake and disquiet us; and are etched in our memories forever.
 
View the exhibition here.

MARGARET BOURKE-WHITE: BORN 107 YEARS AGO JUNE 14

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

Photographed by her assistant, 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.


By 1929, Bourke-White’s reputation attracted the attention of the publisher Henry Luce, who engaged her as an associate editor for his FORTUNE magazine. Bourke-White was FORTUNE’s only photographer for the eight months prior to the publication of the first issue in February 1930. Throughout the next several years, there was no location or type of photography too difficult or too mundane for Bourke-White. She covered assignments throughout the United States, and traveled to Germany and Russia. In what would be just one of many “firsts," Bourke-White became the first foreign photographer allowed to take pictures of Russian industry.

Between 1930 and 1936, Bourke-White would return to Russia twice more and become the first foreign cinematographer to leave the country with motion pictures of its industry. In 1934 she photographed the Dust Bowl, and in 1935 began aviation photography for TWA and Eastern Airlines. In 1936, Bourke-White joined Peter Stackpole, Tom McAvoy, and Alfred Eisenstaedt as the first staff photographers for LIFE magazine. Her photograph of the great Fort Peck dam appeared on the first issue’s cover.

Bourke-White went on to cover the world, traveling to Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Rumania, Turkey, Syria, Egypt, China, and again to the Soviet Union. She was the only U.S. photographer present in Moscow as the Germans attacked Russia in 1941. Bourke-White became the first woman accredited as a war correspondent in 1942, and became the first woman to accompany an Air Force bombing mission (1943).

 

 Margaret Bourke-White In Her High Altitude Flight Suit (holding aerial camera, standing in front of B-17 "Flying Fortress" bomber), 1943. (c.Time Inc.)


In 1944, Bourke-White covered World-War II from Italy, eventually joining Patton’s army as it traveled through Germany in 1945. Among Bourke-White’s most haunting and memorable work are the pictures taken at Buchenwald.

 

Margaret Bourke-White: Buchenwald Prisoners, 1945 (c. Time Inc.)

Assignments for LIFE took Bourke-White throughout India, Japan, Korea, and South Africa. Bourke-White authored several books, including You Have Seen Their Faces, Shooting The Russian War, Purple Heart Valley, and Halfway To Freedom. There are numerous books written about her life and work as well as a 1960 made-for-television movie. She fought a heroic 20-year battle with Parkinson’s disease prior to her death in 1971.

Bourke-White’s photographs are included in many important museum collections, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York. In 1998, Sidney Monroe curated the the first significant exhibit of her work in many years at his New York gallery that featured the premiere of Estate authorized prints, and the centennial anniversary of her birth was celebrated with the exhibition “Margaret Bourke-White At 100” at Monroe Gallery of Photography, April 2 – June 27, 2004.

Several of Bourke-White's iconic photographs will be included in the exhibition "History's Big Picture", Monroe Gallery of Photography, July 1 - September 25, 2011.

D-DAY: JUNE 6, 1944

 

 Men of the 16th Infantry Regiment seek shelter from German machine-gun fire in shallow waterbehind "Czech hedgehog" beach obstacles, Easy Red sector, Omaha Beach.

© Robert Capa/Magnum Photos.

 
The Magnificent Eleven: The D-Day Photographs of Robert Capa

Via Skylighters.org

When soldiers of the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division landed at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, photographer Robert Capa, in the employ of LIFE magazine, was among them.

Perhaps the best known of all World War II combat photographers, the Hungarian-born Capa had made a name for himself well before climbing into a landing craft with men of Company E in the early morning hours of D-Day. He risked his life on more than one occasion during the Spanish Civil War and had taken what is considered the most eerily fascinating of all war photographs. The famous image reportedly depicts the death of Spanish Loyalist militiaman Frederico Borrell Garcia as he is struck in the chest by a Nationalist bullet on a barren Iberian hillside.

Capa was known to say, "If your pictures aren't good enough, you aren't close enough." On D-Day, he came close once again. With Capa standing in the very stern, his landing craft mistakenly came ashore at the section of Omaha Beach dubbed "Easy Red." Then the ramp went down.

"The flat bottom of our barge hit the earth of France," Capa remembered in his book Slightly Out of Focus. "The boatswain lowered the steel-covered barge front, and there, between the grotesque designs of steel obstacles sticking out of the water, was a thin line of land covered with smoke — our Europe, the 'Easy Red' beach.

"My beautiful France looked sordid and uninviting, and a German machine gun, spitting bullets around the barge, fully spoiled my return. The men from my barge waded in the water. Waist-deep, with rifles ready to shoot, with the invasion obstacles and the smoking beach in the background gangplank to take my first real picture of the invasion. The boatswain, who was in an understandable hurry to get the hell out of there, mistook my picture-taking attitude for explicable hesitation, and helped me make up my mind with a well-aimed kick in the rear. The water was cold, and the beach still more than a hundred yards away. The bullets tore holes in the water around me, and I made for the nearest steel obstacle. A soldier got there at the same time, and for a few minutes we shared its cover. He took the waterproofing off his rifle and began to shoot without much aiming at the smoke-hidden beach. The sound of his rifle gave him enough courage to move forward, and he left the obstacle to me. It was a foot larger now, and I felt safe enough to take pictures of the other guys hiding just like I was."

Capa was squeezing off photographs as he headed for a disabled American tank. He remembered feeling "a new kind of fear shaking my body from toe to hair, and twisting my face." With great difficulty his trembling hands reloaded his camera. All the while he repeated a sentence that he had picked up during the Spanish Civil War: "Es una cosa muy seria" ("This is a very serious business").

After what seemed an eternity, Capa turned away from the beach killing zone and spotted an incoming LCI (landing craft, infantry). He headed for it. "I did not think and I didn't decide it," he later wrote. "I just stood up and ran toward the boat. I knew that I was running away. I tried to turn but couldn't face the beach and told myself, 'I am just going to dry my hands on that boat.'"

With his cameras held high to keep them from getting waterlogged, Capa was pulled aboard the LCI and was soon out of harm's way. He had used three rolls of film and exposed 106 frames. After reaching England, he sped by train to London and delivered his precious film for developing.

A darkroom technician was almost as anxious to see the invasion images as Capa himself. In his haste, the technician dried the film too quickly. The excess heat melted the emulsion on all but 10 of the frames. Those that remained were blurred, surreal shots, which succinctly conveyed the chaos and confusion of the day.

Capa's D-Day photos have become classics. One of them, depicting a GI struggling through the churning surf of Omaha Beach, has survived as the definitive image of the Normandy invasion. He went on to photograph the Arab-Israeli war in 1948. He also photographed his friends Ernest Hemingway and Pablo Picasso, as well as film star Ingrid Bergman, with whom he reportedly had a love affair.

After that, having cheated death so many times, Capa vowed never to risk his life in wartime photography again. In 1954, however, he agreed to supply LIFE with some photos of the escalating conflict between the French and the Viet Minh in Indochina. That spring, while attempting to get as close to the fighting as possible, he stepped on a land mine and was killed at the age of 40.

Capa's shot of a victorious Yank graced the May 14, 1945 cover of LIFE.

Robert Capa is one of many wartime photographers who have risked their lives and made the ultimate sacrifice to capture the essence of desperate combat on film. Frozen in time and etched in our collective memory, the D-Day photos speak volumes about courage and sacrifice.

John G. Morris, 1998

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"I had rehearsed my part in every detail, from the moment the raw film arrived in London to the transfer of prints and negatives to the courier who would take them to the States — with a stop at the censor's office in between."

– John G. Morris
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"Dennis came bounding up the stairs and into my office, sobbing. 'They're ruined! Ruined! Capa's films are all ruined!'"

– John G. Morris

The Editor: John Morris

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Something woke me early on the morning of Tuesday, June 6, 1944. I drew the blackout curtain and saw that it was just another dull, gray day, colder than an English spring had any right to be. The streets were empty, and I was alone in the flat I shared with Frank Scherschel on Upper Wimpole Street in London's West End. He had departed — vanished, actually, without saying a word — several days earlier for his battle station, a camouflaged airfield from which he would fly reconnaissance over the English Channel to photograph the largest armada ever assembled. My job was to stay behind, to edit those and other photos for LIFE as picture editor of the London bureau.

I dressed as usual in olive drab, turned on the radio, made tea and read the papers, which of course had nothing to report. Then, at 8:32 London time, the bulletin came over the BBC:

"Under command of General Eisenhower, Allied naval forces, supported by strong Allied air forces, began landing Allied armies this morning on the northern coast of France."

"This is it," I whispered to myself, uttering the very words that Joe Liebling of The New Yorker later called "the great cliché of the Second World War." I hurried to the TIME-LIFE office in Soho, even though there wouldn't be much for me to do — for many hours, as it turned out.

I had been waiting eight months for this day. There had been a false alarm on Saturday, when a young telegrapher in the Associated Press London bureau, practicing to get up her speed, had put out an erroneous bulletin:

URGENT PRESS ASSOCIATED NYK FLASH EISENHOWER'S HQ ANNOUNCED ALLIED LANDINGS IN FRANCE

It had been corrected within a minute — "Bust that flash" — but it had sent a wave of panic through both Allied and German headquarters. Now it was for real. Tuesday was a good D-Day for LIFE. Our job was to furnish action pictures for the next issue, dated June 19, which would close on Saturday in New York, and appear the following week. Wirephotos, of poor quality and limited selection, would not do; besides, they would be available to newspapers through the pool. Our only hope to meet the deadline was to send original prints and negatives, as many as possible, in a pouch that would leave Grosvenor Square by motorcycle courier at precisely 9:00 a.m. London time on Thursday. The courier would take it to a twin-engine plane standing by at an airdrome near London. At Prestwick, Scotland, the base for transatlantic flights, the pouch would be transferred to a larger plane. After one or two fuel stops, it would arrive in Washington, D.C., and our pictures would be hand-carried to New York on Saturday.

I had rehearsed my part in every detail, from the moment the raw film arrived in London to the transfer of prints and negatives to the courier who would take them to the States — with a stop at the censor's office in between. Clearing the censors at the Ministry of Information was by now a familiar routine. Their office was on the ground floor of the University of London's tall central building, which backed onto Bedford Square. Available twenty-four hours a day, the censors were cooperative, as censors go, permitting us to sit alongside them as they worked. Our photographers knew to avoid the faces of Allied dead, shoulder patches that revealed unit designations, and "secret" weapons (although by now most were known to the enemy) — so the work was for the most part pro forma. But it was tedious in the extreme, since every single print had to be stamped, after which the censor bundled all the acceptable material into an envelope and sealed it, using a special tape imprinted with the words PASSED FOR PUBLICATION. Without the tape, it could not leave the country.

Getting the packet by car to the courier at Grosvenor Square, about a mile from the ministry, looked simple on the map, but the most direct way, down Oxford Street, was often jammed with double-decker buses, so I devised a parallel route on a series of side streets: Hollen to Noel to Great Marlborough to Hanover to Brook (I can remember every turn five decades later). This put me onto the wrong side of Grosvenor Square, but the final fifty yards could be covered on foot — while running at top speed. I left the little two-door Austin sedan Time Inc. had given me to its own fate. It was not uncommon for joyriders to take it out for a spin when I worked late, but that was no problem. A call to Scotland Yard was all that was necessary. The car would invariably be found as soon as the thief ran out of what little petrol was in the tank.

For the Normandy invasion, there were twelve photographers accredited for the wire services and six for LIFE. (In the photo at left, taken one week before disembarkation in Normandy, are (top) from left to right: Bob Landry, George Rodger, Frank Scherschel, and Bob Capa. Bottom, John Morris (Editor) stands between Ralph Morse and David Scherman.) Only four press photographers were supposed to land with the first wave of American infantry on D-Day itself, and we managed to get two of the spots, for Bob Landry and Robert Capa. Both were veterans — Capa would be on the fifth front of his third major war. Although often unlucky at cards and horses, Capa nevertheless used a gambling metaphor to describe his situation on D-Day in his 1947 memoir-novel, Slightly Out of Focus: "The war correspondent has his stake — his life — in his own hands, and he can put it on this horse or that horse, or he can put it back in his pocket at the very last minute ... I am a gambler. I decided to go in with Company E in the first wave."

Bob Landry also felt obliged to accept this dubious privilege. The other LIFE assignments sorted themselves out. Frank Scherschel stuck with his buddies in the Air Force. David Scherman chose the Navy. George Rodger accompanied the British forces, under General Bernard Montgomery. Ralph Morse's assignment was General George Patton's Third Army, but since it would not hit the beachhead until later, he boarded a landing ship whose job it was to pick up casualties — of which there would be plenty.

Who would get the first picture? Bad weather prevented good general views from either air (Scherschel) or sea (Scherman). Rodger, landing with the British on an undefended beach, "walked ashore in a blaze of anti-climax," as he put it in typically modest understatement. All day Tuesday we waited, and no pictures. It was rumored that one Signal Corps photographer had been killed in the first hours, but it turned out that he had "only" lost a leg. Late on Tuesday night Bert Brandt of Acme Newspictures, having scarcely gotten his feet wet, returned to London with a first picture!, but not a terribly exciting one, of a momentarily unopposed landing on the French coast, shot from the bow of his landing craft. Landry's film — and his shoes — somehow got lost. A disaster. I had been told that AP would have the fourth first-wave spot, but not one of their six photographers landed that day. So it was entirely up to Capa to capture the action, and where was he? Hour after hour went by. We were now waiting in the gloom of Wednesday, June 7, keeping busy by packaging the "background pictures," all of relatively little interest, that now flooded in from official sources. The darkroom staff — all five of them — had been standing by idly since Tuesday morning, their anxiety about the pressure they would be under growing steadily by the hour. This nervousness would soon result in an epic blunder.

At about 6:30 Wednesday evening, the call came in from a Channel port: Capa's film was on the way. "You should get it in an hour or two," a voice crackled over the line before fading into static. I shared this information with pool editor E. K. Butler of AP, a feisty little martinet whose nickname was "Colonel." He snapped back, "All I want is pictures, not promises!" Around nine, a panting messenger arrived with Capa's little package: four rolls of 35-millimeter film plus half a dozen rolls of 120 film (2 1/4 by 2 1/4 inches) that he had taken in England and on the Channel crossing. A scrawled note said that the action was all in the 35-millimeter, that things had been very rough, that he had come back to England unintentionally with wounded being evacuated, and that he was on his way back to Normandy.

Braddy, our lab chief, gave the film to young Dennis Banks to develop. Photographer Hans Wild looked at it wet and called up to me to say that the 35-millimeter, though grainy, looked "fabulous!" I replied, "We need contacts - rush, rush, rush!" Again I phoned Butler through the AP switchboard, but he could only bellow, "When do I get pictures?" Brandt's wirephoto of troops landing apparently unopposed had scarcely satisfied the West's desperate need to believe in the actuality of invasion. A few minutes later Dennis came bounding up the stairs and into my office, sobbing. "They're ruined! Ruined! Capa's films are all ruined!" Incredulous, I rushed down to the darkroom with him, where he explained that he had hung the films, as usual, in the wooden locker that served as a drying cabinet, heated by a coil on the floor. Because of my order to rush, he had closed the doors. Without ventilation the emulsion had melted.

I held up the four rolls, one at a time. Three were hopeless; nothing to see. But on the fourth roll there were eleven frames with distinct images. They were probably representative of the entire 35-millimeter take, but their grainy imperfection — perhaps enhanced by the lab accident — contributed to making them among the most dramatic battlefield photos ever taken. The sequence began as Capa waded through the surf with the infantry, past antitank obstacles that soon became tombstones as men fell left and right. This was it, all right. D-Day would forever be known by these pictures.

One more ordeal lay ahead. We now had only a few hours to get our picture packet through the censors, and in addition to Capa's we had hundreds of other photos, the best from Dave Scherman of matters just before the landing. The British and Canadians had covered invasion preparations for days, as had the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Navy and Air Force photographers. Nobody really cared now about such pictures, but we dutifully sent them on.

At 3:30 on Thursday morning, pictures in hand — including Capa's precious eleven — I drove my Austin through deserted streets to the Ministry of Information, where I had to wait my turn. Ours was the largest picture shipment of the week, and I almost wished I could throw all but the Capa shots overboard in the interest of time. Finally, about 8:30, the censor finished putting his stamp on all the pictures. I stuffed the big envelope, and then it happened. The censor's specially imprinted tape stuck fast to its roll. It simply would not peel off. We tried another roll. Same result. This went on for minutes that seemed hours, and I had to deliver the packet to the courier, a mile away, by nine o'clock — our only chance to make the deadline after eight months!

I left the ministry at about 8:45 and drove like a maniac through the scattered morning traffic, down the little side streets, reaching the edge of Grosvenor Square at 8:59. I ran the last fifty yards and found the courier, in the basement of the Service of Supply headquarters, about to padlock his sack. "Hold it!" I shouted, and he did.

Just after LIFE's Saturday-night close, the editors cabled,

TODAY WAS ONE OF THE GREAT PICTURE DAYS IN LIFE'S OFFICE, WHEN CAPA'S BEACHLANDING AND OTHER SHOTS ARRIVED.

I could only think of the pictures lost. How was I going to face Capa?

The D-Day landing print will be featured in the forthcoming exhibition: "History's Big Picture" at Monroe Gallery of Photograpjhy July 1 - September 26, 2011.


Related: The Photographic Collection of John G. Morris

The National World War II Museum