As arguments rage about the credibility of photographs taken during the heat of battle in the Lebanon comes news of the death of a photographer celebrated for taking one of the world's iconic war pictures. Joe Rosenthal, the man who captured the picture of US marines raising the stars and stripes at Iwo Jima during the second world war, died yesterday, aged 94, in California. In awarding him a Pulitzer in 1945, the committee praised him for his "frozen flash of history". The picture's context is all-important: it was taken during a 36-day battle that ended with 6,621 American dead and 19,217 wounded, and all but 1,083 of the 22,000 dug-in Japanese defenders were killed.
Arguably the most famous photograph ever taken, Rosenthal's picture retains its emotional power as a work of art as well as a patriotic icon. It has been reproduced on postage stamps, calendars, newspapers, magazines and countless posters, and it was the model for the gigantic bronze Marine Corps Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.
The picture was so perfect that, over the years there have been several claims that it was staged. Rosenthal then an Associated Press photographer who later spent 35 years with the San Francisco Chronicle, robustly denied the charge, explaining: "It was not posed. I gave no signal and didn't set it up. I just got every break a photographer could have wished for... I was lucky." Indeed he was. He missed the picture of the first flag-raising a few hours earlier, but then he saw five Marines and a Navy corpsman hoisting another, larger flag. That was their moment and his moment.
Rosenthal made little money from the Iwo Jima picture. He received a $4,200 bonus in war bonds from the AP, a $1,000 photography prize from a camera magazine and about $700 for a couple of radio appearances. Altogether, Rosenthal reckoned he made less than $10,000 (£5,200) from the picture. (Via San Francisco Chronicle)
