Joe Rosenthal was an American photographer, born on October 9th, 1911 in Washington D.C. He won a Pulitzer Prize for his iconic photograph Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, that was taken during the second World War (Pictured Below).
On the morning of February 23rd, 1945, Joe Rosenthal was visiting the island of Iwo Jima as he did daily on a Marine landing craft when he told that an American flag was being raised at the southern tip of the island on Mount Suribachi. After hurrying to make it on time with his Speed Graphic camera, he began to climb up to the summit of Mount Suribachi. They met up with Sargent Louis Lowrey who had already taken pictures of the flag on the summit, but they both agreed to go back together since one of them was armed.
Whole on top of the summit, Rosenthal observed a group of Marines attaching a large flag to a steel pipe while lowering another smaller flag at the same time. He thought about photographing both of these actions happening at the same time but he could not fit them both into the photo at the same time so he concentrated his efforts to the larger flag that was being raised. He set up a stand of stones and a sandbag to prop himself up, adjusted his camera accordingly and when he saw the marines preparing to raise the second, larger flag he took the picture that captured the flag being raised from the perfect angle. Making sure he had the best picture possible, he took another black and white photo showing four of the marines steadying the flagstaff waiting for the flag to be secured in place. He then gathered a group of sixteen Marines and two Navy corpsmen around the flagstaff for a posed picture.
The people of the United States viewed Rosenthal’s photo as a symbol of victory for them, with the image on every newspaper and some magazine covers. After the battle for the Island of Iwo Jima was over, this picture was used for posters in war bond drives and raised $26.3 billion while it was plastered over 30 cities for roughly two months over the summer.
This picture symbolizes the war efforts that the United States contributed to the war, and the image was turned into a statue for the ‘United States Marine Corps War Memorial’ in Arlington, Virginia and was also the photo used on a U.S postage stamp. There is also a memorial of the photo on the parade ground at ‘Marine Corps Recruit Depot Parris Island’, located in South Carolina.
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