Victor Jorgensen

Victor Jorgensen, photographed by Edward Steichen on the USS Lexington , around 1943

Victor Jorgensen ( July 8, 1913 in Portland , Oregon - June 14, 1994 in West Linn , Oregon) was an American photojournalist and war correspondent with the US Navy .

He was best known for a photograph from VJ-Day , August 14, 1945, the day of the US victory over Japan, on which he captured a scene in which a soldier enthusiastically kisses a woman in Times Square , New York. The same scene was also photographed by Alfred Eisenstaedt , from a better angle and in a more dramatic composition. The Jorgensen picture appeared in the New York Times the next day . The Eisenstaedt picture was not published in Life magazine until almost two weeks later , but it was world-famous as VJ Day in Times Square .

life and work

Jorgensen attended the University of Oregon and Reed College . He married Betty Price on June 17, 1935 and graduated in 1936. Then he went to the newspaper The Oregonian , where he worked his way up from the copy boy to the night editor. He also started taking photos with the Oregonian and by the time World War II broke out he was already a recognized photographer.

In 1942 Jorgensen was drafted into the US Navy , where he was selected by the renowned photographer Edward Steichen as one of the six founding members of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit . For the first two years he served on the aircraft carriers USS Lexington , based in the Gilbert Islands , and USS Monterey , based on the Mariana Islands . He then switched to the destroyer USS Albert W. Grant , was active on land in Borneo and the Philippines during Douglas MacArthur's reconquest of the Philippines and ended his military service in the spring of 1945 on the hospital ship USS Solace , which was stationed off Okinawa . He documented the daily life of the marines, from boredom to fear to complete exhaustion. While he was stationed on the USS Monterey in June and July 1944 , basketball was played in the front elevator shaft of the aircraft carrier. Little did Jorgensen know at the time that one of the soldiers in his picture - Gerald Ford - would become American President thirty years later, after Nixon's resignation .

Steichen and Jorgensen photographed each other, as is the custom among their photographer friends. The two well-known images are very different in style and narrative. While Steichen shows his younger colleagues in a reflective mood, their eyes lowered as if there was no war, Jorgensen chooses a downright heroic pose for the portrait of his boss, tense, looking into the distance, hovering high above the aircraft of the aircraft carrier, which either are just being made ready to go or have just landed. The sea is moving. Both images are reproduced on this page.

Soldier kisses woman on VJ-Day , Victory Day over Japan, in Times Square , New York, August 14, 1945

On August 14, 1945, at the celebrations for the victory over Japan , he was lucky enough to be standing in Times Square and catching the moment of exuberant joy and exuberance, but at the same time the misfortune of a less favorable position than his colleague Alfred Eisenstaedt . While his picture became world famous, a classic according to the New York Times , his picture as a meat-and-potatoes shot was always in the background. At the same time, however, it proves the authenticity of Eisenstaedt's composition and prevented from the start the suspicion that the life photographer might have created the scene. The New York Times described the scene in 2010 as "a defining picture of the American century, an image that expresses the joy of a nation at the moment of its greatest triumph". Jorgensen's photograph of the scene was taken while serving in the US Navy. As a result, like all his war images, it is archived in the National Archives and Records Administration and in the public domain (while Eisenstaedt's recording is still subject to copyright protection until 2065).

In 1946, Jorgensen retired from military service with the rank of lieutenant, and in the following ten years traveled with his wife to large parts of the world and wrote reports. The couple formed a photographer researcher team and published in a number of well-known American journals and magazines, including Fortune , Saturday Evening Post , Collier’s , Life and the Ladies Home Journal . Jorgensen also served as President of the American Society of Media Photographers , advocating minimum wages for photographers and fair working conditions.

In 1955 he settled in Maryland with his wife , took over the editing of the Chesapeake Skipper , a renowned magazine for yachtsmen, renamed it The Skipper and ran it successfully for 14 years. During the time of his editing, the subscriptions rose from 1,500 to 50,000 and during this time the couple's two daughters, Lee and Vicky, were born. With the intention of retiring and devoting himself to his hobby, cabinet making , Jorgensen and his family moved to his home state of Oregon in 1968. But he quickly missed the journalistic activity and together with his wife founded the Telltale Compass , a newsletter for boat owners. After twenty years, in 1989, the newsletter was sold and Jorgensen was now fully involved in artisanal furniture construction. A large number of his photographs from the war years were published and exhibited immediately after 1945. In the 1990s, shortly before the 50th anniversary of the end of the war, interest increased again significantly and he was invited to design an exhibition in Astoria , Oregon. In spring 1994 he and his wife selected pictures and wrote descriptions of them. He did not see the exhibition again. He died shortly before his 81st birthday of complications from cancer.

Photographs

• 

  CDR Edward Steichen photographed above the deck of the aircraft carrier USS Lexington , November 1943

• 

  Marines, cheered on by Ensign V. A. Prather, push a damaged aircraft, December 1943

• 

  Future President of the United States, Gerald Ford , plays basketball on the USS Monterey , June 1944

• 

  Marines exit from a fruit sellers stand in Manila, May 1945

• 

  A soldier's wounds are treated on the USS Solace , en route from Okinawa to Guam, May 1945

Web links

Commons : Victor Jorgensen  - collection of images, videos and audio files

References and comments

1. ↑ Marshall Berman : COLUMBIA FORUM: Everyman in Times Square Archived from the original on July 29, 2016. Information: The archive link was automatically inserted and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. In: COLUMBIA FORUM (Ed.): COLUMBIA FORUM . March – April 2007. Retrieved September 17, 2016. 
2. ↑ CBS News : Lt. Victor Jorgensen's kiss photo , undated, accessed September 18, 2016.
3. ↑ The Eisenstaedt picture became a classic for postcards and posters, but the Jorgensen picture was also printed several times as a poster, cf. AllPosters: Victor Jorgensen , seven art prints in various formats, accessed September 18, 2016.
4. ↑ ^{a b} Victor Jorgensen '36 . In: Reed Magazine . August 1994. Retrieved September 17, 2016.
5. ↑ ^{a b c} Victor H. Jorgensen Papers . The Regents of the University of California. Retrieved September 17, 2016.
6. ↑ Faces of War: The Untold Story of Edward Steichen's WWII Photographers , 48 pages, Mark D. Faram, Berkeley Caliber, New York, New York 2009, ISBN 978-0-425-22140-2 .
7. ^ President Gerald R. Ford . US Navy . 2007. Retrieved September 18, 2016.
8. ↑ World War II Photographs . militaryunits . 2007. Archived from the original on September 18, 2007. Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Retrieved September 18, 2016: "WW2042" Activities aboard USS MONTEREY. Navy pilots in the forward elevator well playing basketball. ” (Activities aboard USS Monterey . Navy pilots play basketball in the front elevator shaft.) Gerald Ford has been identified as the left-hand player in the air . The picture was taken by Lt. Attributed to Victor Jorgensen and dates from June / July 1944. " 
9. ↑ The section of the version available on Wikicommons differs significantly from the one shown on the Geir and Kate Jordahl page , where Steichen was cropped and the image shows more of the aircraft and its crew in the foreground. See: Victor Jorgensen, Edward Steichen Photographing the action on the USS Lexington , Silver Gelatin Print 1943 , accessed September 17, 2016.
10. ↑ Nurse Tells of Storied Kiss. No, Not That Nurse .. . In: The New York Times , August 13, 2010. Retrieved September 18, 2016. 
11. ↑ The photo of Alfred Eisenstaedt can be seen in the English language Wikipedia under VJ Day in Times Square due to other copyright regulations in the USA .
    
12. ↑ ^{a b} biography of Victor Jorgensen from Return to Manila: An exhibition of World War II Navy photographs by Lieutenant Victor Jorgensen, USNR . An exhibit at the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria , Oregon, December 7, 1994 through the summer of 1995. Quoted here. According to Online Archive of California (OAC): Victor H. Jorgensen Papers , accessed September 17, 2016.