Joe Rosenthal

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima, 1945 Joe Rosenthal's picture shows the second flag raised on Mount Suribachi, a larger one brought up after Marines had planted a smaller flag earlier that day. It became the picture through which Americans saw the Pacific war, and its history shows how a famous image collects myths. Rosenthal also took a posed group shot under the flag, and when later asked whether he had staged his photograph he thought the question meant that one and said yes, which fed decades of suspicion. Marine cameraman Bill Genaust's film of the raising helped show the famous frame was not staged. Even the men in it have been revised: the Marine Corps has corrected two of the identifications, in 2016 and again in 2019.