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Item Tag: 1945

WORLD WAR II PHOTO EDWARD STEICHEN NAVAL AVIATION PHOTOGRAPHIC UNIT

Edward Jean Steichen (1879-1973) ed.; Naval Aviation Unit; “Japanese Freighter Peppered by Carrier-Based Planes – Jaluit Atoll, February 16, 1944”, uncredited photographer. First appeared in “US Navy War Photos: Pearl Harbor to Tokyo Bay: a collection of official U..S. Navy, Marine Corps and Coast Guard photographs” ; publ. by U.S. Camera, New York, 1945, p 23. Book caption reads: “dramatic strafing attacks off the Marshalls produced these geysers around the ship and set it afire”. Image in very good condition. Sheet 20 x 23 7/8″, 1/4″ margins. Some toning at paper edges, some creasing top margin, small 1/2″ tear left margin, archivally repaired. Very oddly, mislabeled on the reverse, in pen: “USS Martino – Freighter in convoy of 23. Just a rough sea.” Also a designation in pencil: “Bn(?) Aer 215 146” (see pics) This photograph is cropped horizontally compared to the panoramic image that appears on the US Naval Academy Nimitz Library website (print # 0390). The photographic paper is consistent with a World War II printing. The provenance of this item was a collection of photos and documents dating from the Civil War, WWI, and WWII. While it was not possible to ascertain the exact origin of this print it’s clear that, in addition to prints requested by the photographers from the lab at the time, many prints were issued to a wide variety of entities. And unfortunately, many were never credited to a specific photographer: “After their release, the photographs circulated in a number of ways. As noted previously, some were distributed by the Navy’s Public Relations office, and others were used to illustrate recruiting posters. The service publication Naval Aviation News became a showplace for the photographs of Steichen’s unit; virtually every cover during the war originated with the Naval Aviation unit. In addition, Steichen must have put to use his many contacts within the magazine field, for photographs from his unit were featured prominently in Life, Look, The New York Times Magazine, Popular Photography, Vogue, Art News Annual, and of course, U.S. Camera . By the end of the war, Navy offices around the world featured photographs by Steichen’ s photographers hung next to paintings of famous scenes from the Navy’s past. The only problem, from the photographers’ point of view, was that no one outside the Navy knew by whom the photo graphs were taken, and the wide circulation of the pictures may have exacerbated their overriding complaint: the lack of individual picture credits. Despite Steichen ‘s efforts, he was never able to convince the Navy to relax its policy of crediting all pictures simply ‘Official US Navy Photograph’.” (Phillips, Christopher, “Edward Steichen and World War II Naval Photography” (1981). Thesis. Rochester Institute of Technology. Accessed from) see also: “Steichen at War”, Christopher Phillips; Harry N Abrams, Inc., New York; 1981. As with all my listings, items may be returned no questions asked. Please visit my Ebay sites: ART – https://www.ebay.com/str/rufus1226 Records – www.ebay.com/usr/juledefelice_0 Books – www.ebay.com/usr/j18-jule www.ebay.com/usr/judefe-65