Joe Rosenthal’s beyond iconic photo of six Marines raising the American flag over the Japanese island of Iwo Jima grabbed the world’s attention when it was published in the spring of 1945. It wasn’t until after the photograph had been widely circulated that the public learned the truth of the moment Rosenthal had captured: The photo was actually of Marines raising a flag to replace another, smaller flag that had been planted atop Mount Suribachi earlier that day. We also learned later that some of the men in the picture were misidentified by the press, and several of them were killed in action soon after it was taken.
But does that context ultimately matter? After all, it is the image itself, not the story around it, that is ingrained in our collective memory and enshrines the legacies of the Americans who fought and died in the Pacific theater during World War II.
The power of photography cannot be overstated. And it can be especially potent when the subject matter relates to war and the military. Warfighters inhabit a universe far removed from the daily lives of most ordinary people. For those of us on the homefront, photography provides a glimpse across that gulf, and from a safe enough distance that the life of a soldier can appear glamorous. Just as with the Marines originally identified in Rosenthal’s famous photograph, troops throughout the generations have been transformed into minor celebrities with just the snap of a camera. But their fame rarely stretches beyond the images, which can take on a life of their own while the context around them often gets lost forever.
