”Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima” is one of the most reproduced photos of all time. It is is a perfect photo partly because it touches so many people and leaves few indifferent towards it. It was taken by an Associated Press war photographer who was declared 4F for military service because his eyesight was only 1/20 th that of an average man. It is the only photo to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year of its publication. Raising The Flag was shot on February 23, 1945 by Joe Rosenthal. There was an element of luck and accident involved, as he almost missed the shot due to some absent mindedness, only to swing about and capture the instant without hesitation or pause to line up the image in his viewfinder. Perhaps because of Rosenthal’s mental lapse, he was able to achieve a synchronicity with history at a predetermined conjunction of time and space.
Raising The Flag On Iwo Jima
The photo has been associated with propaganda , buttered with jingoism and the bemedalled decorations of combat ;to hawk War Bonds and to finance more armed confrontation and soak up unemployement. On the left, it has been equally misaapropriated and commodified. First by pop artist Kienholz in the 1960′s for ”Portable War Memorial” and more recently by Banksy with ‘‘Iwo Jima Ghetto’‘.Yet the Rosenthal photo is not intentionally political. “Iwo-Jima” was an accidental photo taken by an accidental tourist in a strange land that produced a work of art as timeless and immortal as Shangri-La in James Hilton’s Lost Horizon. It is a masterpiece of composition. There is sculptured depth, movement and momentum yet the body language is also frozen in time.
The classic triangular pattern suggests an energy and mystery of pyramidal proportions. It is poetic. It underscores something indestructible in the human spirit yet a great fragility and something apallingly flawed as well, that the epic struggle of war is even necessary in a world of abundance. The angle of the flag creates a second asymmetric triangle which captures the photos emotional strength. The same dynamic pattern is reproduced in Delacroix’s, Liberty Leading The People where the central figures form a pyramidal shape.
Delacroix: Liberty Leading The People
Joe Rosenthal
COMMENTS
Hey, have you seen this news article?
New details about Michael Jackson’s Death Emerge
I was wondering if you were going to blog about this…
Yes. I think his contribution to modern dance may surpass his musical accomplishments. His influence on dance troupes like ”La La Human Steps” seems in the light of his death, beyond what was previously thought. Lets see him at least buried before a blog. Thanks for your comment
Cool post, just subscribed.
Thanks for subscribing. Feel free to comment. I liked the “family snapshot” story myself as it was a series of abstract coincidences that taken apart, make little sense.