David Perlmutter who obviously knows more about the subject than I ever will, corrects me concerning the famous Iwo Jima photo shown above. I produced it as an example of an obviously staged photograph. Dr. Perlmutter replies:
I just wanted to drop you a line, not as complaint but for clarification. I
read regularly and respect your blog--as Jon Lauck will vouch, I hope, about
this--but...The Iwo Jima (second) flag raising was NOT staged in any way.
Really. One of my areas of research is icons of photojournalism (2 books, dozens
of articles) and I vouch for this. Also, read the book Flag of Our Fathers.
The data virus that the IJ2FR was staged arises from several sources. 1)
Confusion about there being 2 flag-raisings-the second was because the first
flag was too small for Marines fighting elsewhere on the island to see, (2) it
looks so well composed, (3) Joe Rosenthal did not know that the pic would become
famous, and as it did he was not in touch with the home press, still in the
Pacific, and had never even seen the developed images, (4) he assumed that
another shot, of the men posed around the flag, would be the more attractive
image for home-front audiences, (5) when Rosenthal was first told that an image
of his was a huge success, he assumed it was the posed picture, so said
something like, "Yeah I staged that one." But every testimony on record, the
motion picture film of the flag-raising, and the chronology of shots on
Rosenthal's negative role prove: it was an actual, unstaged event that he
captured on film. There are staged photos of war out there-but this was not one.
David D. Perlmutter. Photojournalism and Foreign Policy: Framing Icons of
Outrage in International Crises.
David D. Perlmutter. Visions of War: Picturing Warfare from the Stone Age
to the Cyberage.
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