Five Marines join forces to plant an American flag on Mount Suribachi after the capture of the Japanese island of Iwo Jima at the end of World War II. A magnificent icon: dramatic and symbolic. A photograph regarded as the finest of the war and the most reproduced in the history of photography. But it is a photograph of a staged scene.
An hour and a half earlier, at 10:37 to be precise, the scene had already taken place, albeit with a different flag, different soldiers, and a different photographer: Army photographer Bob Campbell. The story goes that the Marine commanders present thought the first flag was too small and decided to place a second, larger one a little farther away. By then, the young Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal had arrived with his large Speed Graphic camera.
That four-hundredth of a second of his life earned him the Pulitzer Prize
Rosenthal initially wanted to position the first group of soldiers between the two flags, but he could not find them. A few moments later, when John ‘Doc’ Bradley (1923-1994), Michael Strank (1919-1945), Harlon Block (1924-1945), Ira Hayes (1923–1955), Franklin Sousley (1925-1945), and Rene Gagnon (1925–1979) were handling a nearly fifty-kilogram flagpole, Rosenthal pressed the shutter—that four-hundredth of a second of his life earned him the Pulitzer Prize for that moment.
The authoritative magazine US Camera Magazine described it as follows: ‘In that moment, Rosenthal’s camera captured the soul of a nation.’ Rosenthal himself did not rule out a measure of luck: ‘It was like photographing a sporting event. You never know what you have on film.’
The photograph received renewed attention when none other than Clint Eastwood recently released Flags of Our Fathers, a war film that—indeed—tells the story behind Rosenthal’s picture.
Date: February 23, 1945, Joe Rosenthal (1911-2006)
