This week I’m in Washington working for one of my consulting clients. I left my wife, and daughter at home in Tampa to ride out hurricane Fay. Nice guy, huh? Unfortunately, I couldn’t do anything about it except make sure the house and yard were secure before I left. Fortunately, it looks like Fay is going to pass to the east of Tampa which will put them on the side that gets the least wind and rain. For the most part it’s just going to be a rainy couple of days.
I’m staying at a hotel in Rosslyn that is a block away from the Iwo Jima memorial and only a couple of blocks from the Arlington Cemetery. These are certainly two of our country’s most precious treasures. Joe Rosenthal took the original picture of Easy Company raising the flag on Mount Suribachi on February 23, 1943. Easy Company had been fighting for 4 days and had a casualty rate of almost 40% to date. The picture that Rosenthal captured was actually the second raising of the American flag. Joe Campbell captured a lesser known picture of the original flag coming down and it being replaced with the flag that Joe Rosenthal’s famous and moving image captured.
“In that moment, Rosenthal’s camera recorded the soul of a nation.”
. . .Editors of US Camera Magazine.
“It was like shooting a football game. You never knew what you got on film.”
. . . Joe Rosenthal, Photographer
