thedrifter
11-08-08, 10:09 AM
Photo exhbit at Truman Library honors veterans
by Hugh S. Welsh - hugh.welsh@examiner.net
The Examiner
Posted Nov 07, 2008 @ 11:13 AM
Last update Nov 07, 2008 @ 11:27 AM
Independence, MO —
There’s the image of Marines pushing a flag upright atop Mount Suribachi.
And there’s the Times Square kiss between two strangers, a white-capped sailor and a nurse.
These are perhaps the two best-known photographs out of 126 included in the upcoming exhibit “Memories of World War II: Photographs from the Archives of the Associated Press” at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum in Independence. The exhibit will be at the library fromTuesday through Jan. 11.
But, according to Clay Bauske, the library’s curator, those two photographs are not alone in their breadth of emotion.
“We thought it appropriate to open this exhibit on Veterans Day,” said Clay Bauske, the library’s curator. “The images are so very powerful that all together it’s like you’re back in the middle of the war years; it gives you a real scope of what was going on all over the world during the war.”
The traveling exhibit kicked off with the debut of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2005. The photographs capture every theater of the war, whether it’s Europe, the Pacific or the homefront.
While all the images in the exhibit illustrated important facets of the war, Bauske said there are a handful he finds very hard to shake from memory.
One is an aerial shot of a single Japanese plane spinning tailfirst into the shimmering depths of an ocean.
Another was taken in Warsaw, Poland, where Jews – unaware of what fate awaits them – are held at gunpoint by Nazis.
But perhaps Bauske’s favorite portrait is one that is befitting of Veterans Day.
“I like it for the expressions on their faces during the most emotional times in the war and possibly their lives,” Bauske said. “But here it’s a positive emotion.”
In it, teary-eyed Italian women are kissing the hand of an American G.I. He and his comrades have liberated their hometown.
Ellie
by Hugh S. Welsh - hugh.welsh@examiner.net
The Examiner
Posted Nov 07, 2008 @ 11:13 AM
Last update Nov 07, 2008 @ 11:27 AM
Independence, MO —
There’s the image of Marines pushing a flag upright atop Mount Suribachi.
And there’s the Times Square kiss between two strangers, a white-capped sailor and a nurse.
These are perhaps the two best-known photographs out of 126 included in the upcoming exhibit “Memories of World War II: Photographs from the Archives of the Associated Press” at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library & Museum in Independence. The exhibit will be at the library fromTuesday through Jan. 11.
But, according to Clay Bauske, the library’s curator, those two photographs are not alone in their breadth of emotion.
“We thought it appropriate to open this exhibit on Veterans Day,” said Clay Bauske, the library’s curator. “The images are so very powerful that all together it’s like you’re back in the middle of the war years; it gives you a real scope of what was going on all over the world during the war.”
The traveling exhibit kicked off with the debut of the National World War II Memorial in Washington, D.C. in 2005. The photographs capture every theater of the war, whether it’s Europe, the Pacific or the homefront.
While all the images in the exhibit illustrated important facets of the war, Bauske said there are a handful he finds very hard to shake from memory.
One is an aerial shot of a single Japanese plane spinning tailfirst into the shimmering depths of an ocean.
Another was taken in Warsaw, Poland, where Jews – unaware of what fate awaits them – are held at gunpoint by Nazis.
But perhaps Bauske’s favorite portrait is one that is befitting of Veterans Day.
“I like it for the expressions on their faces during the most emotional times in the war and possibly their lives,” Bauske said. “But here it’s a positive emotion.”
In it, teary-eyed Italian women are kissing the hand of an American G.I. He and his comrades have liberated their hometown.
Ellie