The Museum of the Rockies will exhibit "Memories of World War II, Photographs from the archives of The Associated Press," through January.
The exhibit is a spectrum of photos from all theaters of the war and the home front, ranging from Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal's classic Iwo Jima flag-raising in 1945 to scores of pictures not seen in decades.
he Museum of the Rockies will supplement the exhibit with artifacts and interviews that tell the story of the war from a Montana perspective.
"As far as we know, all of the pictures were transmitted at some time on AP wires, but some probably have not been touched since the war," said Charles Zoeller, curator of the exhibit, author of an accompanying book, and chief of AP's vast photo library. Founded in 1848, the AP is the world's oldest and largest newsgathering organization, serving some 15,000 media outlets in more than 120 countries.
The exhibit includes familiar scenes of Japan's attack on Pearl Harbor, along with British and American troops hitting Normandy beaches on D-Day and marching through newly liberated Paris.
Also included are photographs of the famous --Hitler and Mussolini, Winston Churchill, actor James Stewart -- as well as the nameless, including Nazi SS troops herding defiant Jews after the Warsaw Ghetto uprising of 1943, and Russian women laying flowers at the feet of four dead GIs who helped liberate them from a slave labor camp.
Many photos credit AP staff photographers by name; others came from anonymous Army or Navy photographers. Some of the photographer were killed in combat; others went on to postwar prominence in their craft.
"You had the same fears as the GIs, but you had to think about the picture," says retired AP photojournalist Max Desfor, who covered the battle of Okinawa and Japan's surrender aboard the battleship USS Missouri, and later won a Pulitzer Prize in Korea. "My camera was my shield, and I didn't even think about the idea that a bullet might hit me."
In an introduction to the book, retired CBS anchor Walter Cronkite praises the courage of journalists who shared danger with the troops.
The exhibit in Bozeman is part of a eighteen city national tour over a 4 1/2year period containing 126 black and white photographic reproductions from the archives of The Associated Press. The tour was developed and managed by Smith Kramer Fine Art Services, an exhibition tour development company in Kansas City, Mo
The exhibit willbe at the Museum of the Rockies through Jan. 31.
The Museum of the Rockies is open from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m., Monday through Saturday, and 12:30 p.m. to 5 p.m. on Sundays.
For more information visit museumoftherockies.org or call 994-DINO.
Shelley McKamey, dean and director of the Museum of the Rockies, (406) 994-6543, smckamey@montana.edu
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