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thedrifter
02-09-08, 10:50 AM
THE MOST FAMOUS PHOTOGRAPH OF ALL TIME

Robert O'Brien

Friday, February 8, 2008


Notes on Rosenthal: Joe Rosenthal, the San Francisco cameraman, now famous for the pictures he took on Iwo Jima, returned home. After a few days here, he will go to New York for a new assignment. It was Rosenthal who snapped the great picture of the raising of the flag on Mount Suribachi. Rosenthal will never know the identity of the Marines who appear in his dramatic and inspiring photograph. After the flag was raised, they had too many things to do, and so did he, for him to ask their names. Actually, the flag raised in the picture was the second to fly from the summit of Suribachi. It replaced a smaller one Marines had unfurled 45 minutes before.

Rosenthal was known to the Marines with whom he landed on Iwo Jima as "Floating Joe." While transferring from a ship to a landing boat, he fell into the water. And twice he was drenched to the skin while attempting to recover helmets tossed to him on the way in to the beach. The helmet he finally wore belonged to a casualty.

Much speculation among the Marines was caused by a painted sign that stood near Iwo Jima's Motoyama airstrip No. 2. It read, "The taking of photographs or the making of sketches is absolutely forbidden without permission from military authorities." The mysterious angle to the sign was that it was written in both Japanese and English, and was dated 1937, when visits to the island by foreigners were absolutely forbidden by the Japanese.

His action pictures in the Pacific are not the first to win national recognition for Rosenthal. He was the news photographer who, in 1936, won the Editor and Publisher award for the best sports picture of the year. It was a shot of Max Baer, shortly after Jim Braddock had won a decision to take the world heavyweight championship. It showed Baer's head and torso, covered with soapy lather, in a shower bath. Its title: "All washed up!"

This article was first published in The Chronicle on March 19, 1945. Joe Rosenthal won a Pulitzer for his Iwo Jima shot, often called the most famous photo of all time. Rosenthal worked for The Chronicle for three decades after the war. He died Aug. 20, 2006.

http://imgs.sfgate.com/c/pictures/2006/10/15/pk_cafra01.jpg

Ellie