Photographers in World War II

In 1939, a great war began. World War II one of the largest conflicts the world had seen had begun and started to affect the world in such a way that it stretched to many corners of the world. With such an enormous war waging on, the people of the time had to know what was happening. A picture is worth a thousand words it has been said. With the ever-growing field of photography and the further development of photographs, photography had a chance to make in impact during this time. The rise of World War II gave a chance for photographers to go and document a war in a way never seen before. Photographers in World War II got to experience the war itself, had certain methods and equipment to photograph the war, and were able to capture some enduring images of the war.

Photographers in World War II often got to embark within the military to get coverage of the war. This gave these photographers a chance for a first-hand experience into the the trecherous battlefields of the war. Robert Capa, a photographer, tells of his experience with the soldiers in the Normandy Landing, “ 'Some of the boys were politely puking into paper bags and I saw that this was a civilized invasion,' Capa recalled, “We waited for the [special assault teams] to go in and then I saw the first landing boats coming back and the black coxswain of one boat [was] holding his thumb in the air and it looked like a pushover. We heard popping around our boat, but nobody paid any attention” (Kershaw 28). Seeing such things as a photographer must have been a harrowing experience and this gives a clear example of what exactly these photographers would have to experience in their line of work.

Even more distressing was experiencing actual combat. Capa further says of the N...

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...e a big difference in the conflict and were able to capture the devastation and the essence of the war itself in their cameras. For people such as ourselves in this day and age, we are able to look back at what these people did and what they saw. For us, who never lived in such a period of time we are able to see it for ourselves and get a little bit of an idea of what exactly was going on in the world in that time. World War II is likely to always be remembered and from the photographs of the people who experienced it, their legacy and the legacy of those who fought in it shall be remembered.

In the midst of World War II, the conflict gave the chance for photographers of the time to document the war. These photographers were able to experience it first-hand, use the equipment and methods of the time to capture it, and took some astonishing and memorable imagery.