Joe Rosenthal

Je Rosenthal was born on October 9, 1911 and he started photography as a hobby during the great depression. He later got a job photographing for the Sanfrancisco News in 1932. After that he wanted to be a US army photographer but was rejected because he had bad eyesight. He joined the Associated Press (AP) and followed the U.S. marine corps as an "embedded journalist". Rosenthal was famous for this picture:






It is the flag raising at Iwo Jima. The marines were putting up a bigger flag while taking down a smaller one. Rosenthal wanted to get a picture of the simultaneous exchange of the flags but saw that that would be difficult because as he turned to the person who was filming the exchange to tell him he wasn't in his way, they started to make the exchange. He spun around and snapped the photograph. He was a crown graphic camera so he would have one shot to make the photograph and he would have to change the sheet which could take 3 or 4 seconds which he didn't have. Rosenthal won a Pulitzer prize for this picture and he said he has spent every day of his life trying to tell people that this photograph was NOT staged. Rosenthal died at age 94 on August 20th 2006 of nautral causes