4 Comments
Jun 29Liked by Bruce Ivar Gudmundsson

terrific post, terrific research. I'm kind of a student of altered photography and its effect on wars (in my book about the Middle East conflict, "The Other War: Israelis, Palestinians and the Struggle for Media Supremacy", Encounter 2005) and I'm going to put this one in my files.

Expand full comment

macaroni, johnny, billy, joe, tommy, jerry. God bless em in spite of all of their officers.

Expand full comment

The camera technology of the day virtually guarantees that any images are from training exercises, staged photos in the rest areas, or staged/Hollywood footage. The cameras were bulky, heavy, big, and relatively fragile.

Expand full comment

Photographs have been altered/manipulated/"fixed"/changed since about half an hour after the first photograph on a battlefield was developed. Yet, despite all the decades, we're still far more likely to believe our eyes and struggle against explanations that discredit or alter what our initial impression of what the photograph "says". We can't help it: we've got massively (and increasingly unstable) patched internet age "software" running on our caveman biological "hardware".

Expand full comment