The Fifth Desk · Evaluation
Act I · The Map
Joe Rosenthal · a single photograph made on 23 February 1945 by Joe Rosenthal, photographer for the Associated Press, on the summit of Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on the fifth day of the battle for the island · six Marines raising a United States flag on a long iron pipe, the second flag raised on the summit that morning · black and white, upright · the work scored is the photograph as printed and distributed by the Associated Press, the negative as printed in its published vertical crop; no single print is the work
Mode
Press photograph from the front, made for a news agency and wired to the papers
Mythos
The standard planted on the summit, the high place taken, built from a salvaged pipe and six faceless bodies
Phase
One instant in the middle of a battle: the second flag of the morning, caught as the group began to lift
Presentation
One frame, upright, as printed and distributed in its published crop; black and white; no fixed print size
Register
The heroic and public: grandeur of the civic kind, held in an act not yet finished
Scale
Six figures fused into one, under a sky that fills half the frame
Governing Proposition
On 23 February 1945, the fifth day of the battle for Iwo Jima, Joe Rosenthal released his shutter as six Marines heaved a length of pipe upright on the summit of Mount Suribachi and a flag broke into the wind above them. The wager of the frame, caught in an instant and not composed, is that a nation’s emblem can be shown raised by labour and not by a hero: no face, one diagonal, six bodies fused on one pole, and an empty sky for the flag to enter. What it shows is a triumph; what it leaves out is the battle that went on around it for another month, and the dead.
Act II · The Essay
Movement I
The landings on Iwo Jima began on 19 February 1945. On the fifth day of the battle, 23 February, Joe Rosenthal, a photographer for the Associated Press, was on the summit of Mount Suribachi when a group of Marines raised a United States flag on a long iron pipe. It was the second flag raised there that morning: a first, smaller flag had gone up earlier, and Sergeant Louis Lowery had photographed it. Rosenthal photographed the second raising, and Sergeant Bill Genaust, standing beside him, filmed the same raising in colour.
The work scored is one photograph: the negative as printed and distributed by the Associated Press, in its published vertical crop. The frame is upright and black and white. The pole runs from the lower right to the upper left at about forty-five degrees; the flag at its head is caught in wind and only partly unfurled; six bodies make one mass at the lower left and centre; no face is clearly legible; the ground is broken rubble and shattered scrub; and an even, pale sky fills roughly the upper half. There is no fixed print size, and no single print is the work.
Around the image stand other images that are context and are not scored: Rosenthal’s other frames of that morning, among them a posed group of Marines cheering under the flag; Lowery’s photographs of the first flag; Genaust’s film. After it stand works made from it, the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington by Felix de Weldon, dedicated in 1954, the Seventh War Loan poster and a postage stamp of 1945. Those are weighed as reach and as presence, and are not scored. The photograph won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1945.
Movement II
The pole is the whole architecture of the frame. Every body is ranged along it or braced against it, and the empty sky above is not vacancy but the space the flag is entering. Run the subtractive test and most of the frame holds. Without the man at the base the pole floats. Without the trailing figure at the left, whose hands only just reach it, the group loses the sense of a lift still gathering. Without the wind in the flag the act is finished rather than happening. What yields is the lower margin of rubble, which carries place but could lose a third of itself without loss.
One physics governs everything in the frame: strain along one axis against weight and wind. The men’s thrust, the rise of the pole, the pull of the flag and the slope of the broken ground all obey it, and the farthest elements, the trailing hand at the left and the ragged edge of the flag at the top, are joined by the same line. The coherence is complete, and it is coherence over a small territory: one act, one light, one tone, one direction of force, and no second register in which a death could stand beside the triumph.
The height of the image comes from the same line. The bodies are thrown forward and upward together, the act is arrested before it is complete, and the flag breaks into the wind against a sky whose even tone makes the group monumental at any size of reproduction. The elevation is the heroic group’s, close to the sculptural sublime of a pediment, and a little rhetorical: grandeur of the public kind. It comes once, completely. A photograph is one instant, and the image has no second movement in which to rise again.
Movement III
No face in the frame is clearly legible. The soldier is a back, a helmet, a pair of hands; the six bodies fuse into one creature with twelve limbs; and the act of raising the flag becomes a common strain on one pipe. That is what the image brings into the open and what can be stated of it: the emblem of a nation is raised by labour, not by a hero, and the soldier of this war is anonymous. It is a meaning, not a mood, and it is made wholly through the image.
The anonymity is also what builds the myth. The raising of a standard on a summit is among the oldest of emblems, the sign planted at the high place, and the image builds it from particulars: a length of salvaged pipe, a broken hilltop, six men without faces. Because no one is singled out, the group reads as a people lifting its sign rather than as six named men, and the archetype bears the load. The diagonal surge has the structure of the old heroic groups, a struggle along one axis toward a goal, without quoting any of their poses.
The record took a long time to name them. The identities of the raisers given in 1945 were corrected by the Marine Corps in 2016 and corrected again in 2019. The image that had made the soldier anonymous was itself misread, for seventy years, about who was in it. The myth it carries is national and martial before it is human, and part of its charge was laid on it afterward: by the bronze, by the bond drive and by the stamp. Liberty Leading the People, the painted emblem of a people raising a flag, stands at 8.6 and holds The Archetypal Deep at 9.0; this frame holds it at 8.4.
Movement IV
For decades the image was followed by a charge of staging, confused with the posed frame of Marines cheering under the flag and with the earlier, smaller flag, and Rosenthal answered the charge for the rest of his life. The charge is the proof of what the form knows. Paint the same content, or pose it, and the image can no longer say its main thing: that this happened, unrehearsed, in a fraction of a second, in the middle of a battle. Its authority rests on its having been caught. The blur of motion, the imbalance of the trailing figure and the half furled flag show an act in progress that no painter would have composed so unresolved.
What is made, and what is given, can be told apart. Made: an exposure that holds detail in the uniforms and an even sky in hard midday light, a camera turned as the group began to lift, a release at the instant of greatest diagonal force, a clean tonal range, a vertical crop that concentrates the act. Given: the arrangement of the bodies. By his own account Rosenthal was not sure he had the picture until the film, sent to Guam for processing, had been printed and wired. The finest decisions of the image belong to a second of reflex. It is the photographer’s craft, and it is real, and the making does not bear the load as it does at the highest marks.
The departure from the field is small. The image worked inside the long tradition of the heroic war picture and with the field’s established means, the press camera, the agency wire and the cropped vertical for the front page, and it proposes no new way of seeing. The danger to its maker was grave, and danger to the body is not a wager on form. The Falling Soldier, credited to Robert Capa nine years earlier, stands at 8.0 and holds The Swerve at 8.2, as the decisive case of the turn into the action; this frame belongs to the mature practice of that turn and holds it at 6.8. Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare, another instant, swerves further and stands at 8.1.
Movement V
The image went further than nearly any photograph. It set the model of the iconic war photograph, against which later images are measured and composed, and Thomas Franklin’s photograph of three firefighters raising a flag at Ground Zero in 2001 is a direct echo. Beyond photography it generated the Marine Corps War Memorial, the Seventh War Loan poster and the stamp, a bond tour by the three survivors then identified, and later James Bradley’s book Flags of Our Fathers (2000) and Clint Eastwood’s film of 2006. It is among the most quoted and parodied images in American visual culture. Most of that reach is use of the image rather than a redirection of an art.
The bronze in Arlington makes the same group monumental and static, and beside it the photograph shows what it knows: the motion, the imbalance, the flag half open, an act not yet done. What the image does not show is what holds it where it stands. It shows a triumph on the fifth day of a battle that went on until 26 March 1945, and three of the six men raising the flag were killed before the battle ended. It shows no enemy, no wound and no dead. Its eighty years of return have kept opening its circumstances, the two flags, the two frames, the corrected names, more than the frame itself, which yields its form quickly and settles into emblem.
Eighty-one years on, the image survives whole in its distribution and in prints from the negative, and its presence has been continuous and as wide as any photograph’s. It holds labour, the comradeship of the unit, the state, war and the ground and weather of an island, and not the person, the family, the enemy or the dead. The summit is closed to it by the Epochal Gate, where The Unconcealment, The Swerve, The Archetypal Deep and Pressure on Tradition fall short, and by The Swerve below the Universal Minimum. Migrant Mother, a photograph that discloses a condition where this one raises an emblem, stands at 8.4. Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima stands at 7.9, in Tier III.
Act III · The Twelve
The subtractive test is severe on this image, and it holds for most of the frame. Remove the man at the base of the pole and the pole floats. Remove the trailing figure at the left, whose hands only just reach it, and the group loses the sense of a lift still gathering. Remove the wind in the flag and the act is finished rather than happening. The pole’s diagonal is the whole architecture: every body is ranged along it or braced against it, and the empty sky is the space the flag is entering. What yields is the lower margin of rubble and splintered scrub, which carries place but could lose a third without loss. Necessity caught, not built, is still necessity in the object; it stands below Las Meninas at 9.0 and Broadway Boogie Woogie at 8.7 on this axis, whose necessity was composed.
Score: 8.3 / 10
What the image discloses can be stated. A nation’s emblem is raised by labour, not by a hero. The soldier in this war is anonymous: a back, a helmet, a pair of hands. The act of possession is a common strain, six bodies on one pipe. That is a disclosure of meaning, made wholly through the image. Against it, the emblem conceals nearly all of the condition it stands in. It shows no enemy, no wound and no dead, and it shows a triumph on the fifth day of a battle that went on until 26 March and killed three of the six. The image’s own history, the confusion with the first flag, the charge of staging and two corrections of the raisers’ identities, shows how much it did not and could not say.
Score: 7.6 / 10
The height is real and immediate: the flag breaking into wind against an empty sky above a ruined summit, the bodies thrown forward and upward together, an act arrested at the instant before it is complete. It is the elevation of the heroic group, close in feeling to the sculptural sublime of a pediment, and the even tone of the sky makes it monumental at any size of reproduction. The axis counts frequency as well as height, and a photograph is one instant: the image rises once, completely, and has no second movement. Its height is a little rhetorical, grandeur of the public kind. It reaches higher than The Swing at 7.6 and below The Starry Night at 9.2, whose transport is sustained across the surface.
Score: 8.2 / 10
The image’s strongest deep axis, and the myth is built, not evoked. The raising of a standard on a summit is among the oldest of emblems: the sign planted at the high place, the mountain taken. The image builds it from particulars. The pole is a length of salvaged pipe; the men are faceless; their bodies fuse into one creature with twelve limbs; and the faceless collective is what makes the archetype bear load, a people lifting its sign rather than six named men. The diagonal surge has the structure of the old heroic groups without quoting a pose. What holds it under the top: the myth is national and martial before it is human, and much of the charge it carries was laid on it afterward, by the bronze, the bond drive and the stamp.
Score: 8.4 / 10
The departure is small, and the stake was of a kind this axis does not score. As a press photograph the image worked inside a long tradition of the heroic war picture and the news picture, and inside the field’s established means: the press camera, the agency wire, the cropped vertical for the front page. It proposes no new way of seeing, framing or sequencing. The danger to the maker was real and grave, but danger to the body is not a wager on form. What swerve there is lies in the anonymity, a heroic image without a visible face, and in an instant that made a sculptural group of an unposed second; neither was a programme. That is what holds the axis, with The Encompassed, lowest of the twelve: a practice perfected, not turned.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Substitute a painted or posed form for the same content and the image can no longer say its main thing: that this happened, unrehearsed, in a fraction of a second, in the middle of a battle. The charge of staging, which followed the image for decades and which its maker answered for the rest of his life, is the proof that the form is the knowledge: the image’s authority rests on its having been caught. The instant also carries the blur of motion, the imbalance of the trailing figure and the half furled flag, an act in progress that no painter would have composed so unresolved. The bronze shows by contrast what the photograph knows. Held where it is because light, tone and grain are not where the knowledge lies; it lies in the instant.
Score: 8.0 / 10
The return has been long and has not exhausted, but most of it is historical. Eighty years have kept the image under examination: the first flag and the second, the posed frame and the unposed, the identities corrected in 2016 and again in 2019, the lives of the survivors drawn into a bond tour, a ballad, a book and a film of the next century. Most of that returns to the image’s circumstances and use, not to the image. The frame yields its formal content quickly, the diagonal, the mass and the wind, and its meaning settles into emblem. A return that keeps opening what surrounds an image scores below one that keeps opening the image: well below Fountain at 8.7, whose questions are the work’s own.
Score: 7.6 / 10
Published, so intrinsic force and achieved reach are scored together, in the field of the press and war photograph. Intrinsic force is modest: the image did not reorganise what a photograph can do; it was a superb instance of what the press photograph already did. Achieved reach is scored with intrinsic force: it set the model of the iconic war photograph, to which later images are measured, and Thomas Franklin’s photograph of three firefighters raising a flag at Ground Zero in 2001 is a direct echo; beyond photography it generated the Marine Corps War Memorial (Felix de Weldon, 1954), the Seventh War Loan poster, a postage stamp of 1945, and later James Bradley’s book Flags of Our Fathers (2000) and Clint Eastwood’s film of 2006. Much of that reach is use rather than redirection of an art.
Score: 8.2 / 10
Weighed on form, presence and fabric, over eighty-one years. Form: whole. The image survives entire in the Associated Press distribution and in prints made from the negative from 1945 onward. Presence: continuous and as wide as any photograph’s, kept before attention by a national memorial in bronze, by the stamp, by schoolbooks and by constant reuse; presence earns at most a tenth, and it earns it here. Fabric: an image that survives in a distributed edition does not depend on one sheet of film. Against the widest figure, the surface is in part fixed to its moment, a wartime emblem whose meaning has been contested and partly reread, though it has outlived the conditions that produced it. One tenth under the widest figure for its age.
Score: 9.1 / 10
Judged as command of the photograph, to the same anchors as every desk. What is commanded: an exposure fit for hard midday light that holds detail in the uniforms and an even sky; a camera turned at the moment the group began to lift; a release at the instant of greatest diagonal force. The tonal range of the print is clean, the figures stand clear of the ground, and the vertical crop concentrates the act. What is not commanded: by his own account Rosenthal was not sure he had the picture until the film, sent to Guam for processing, had been printed and wired; the arrangement of the bodies was given, not made; the finest decisions belong to a second of reflex. The craft is real, but at the highest marks the making bears the load, and here the instant does.
Score: 8.0 / 10
One physics governs the frame: strain along one axis against weight and wind. The men’s thrust, the pole’s rise, the flag’s pull in the wind and even the slope of the broken ground obey it, and the most distant elements, the trailing hand at the left and the flag’s ragged edge at the top, are joined by the same diagonal. The coherence is complete. But narrowness is not coherence, and the range covered is narrow: one act, one light, one tone, one direction of force. There are no distant elements in tone or meaning to reconcile, no death beside the triumph and no second register. The law is total over a small territory, where Broadway Boogie Woogie, at 8.9 on this axis, lays one law over a wide field.
Score: 7.9 / 10
The orders held and integrated within the frame: the body at labour; the comradeship of the unit; the state and its emblem; war; the ground of a ruined island and the weather of its sky. They are held, not listed: the state is raised by the body’s labour, and the wind is what makes the emblem live. What holds the axis, with The Swerve the lowest of the twelve, is what is absent: the person, since no face and no consciousness is shown; the family; history beyond the instant; the enemy and the dead; the sacred except as civil religion. For a single photograph the hold is wide, wider than The Swing’s at 6.4 or Water Lilies’ at 6.5, and the form puts the upper bands out of reach. The figure describes the form.
Score: 6.8 / 10
Act IV · The Reckoning
7.9 / 10 · Final Average
Placement: Tier III · Major
Strongest Dimensions
The Imperishable at 9.1, then The Archetypal Deep at 8.4 and The Inevitable at 8.3. An image that survives whole in its distribution after eighty-one years, with a presence as wide as any photograph’s; the standard planted on the summit, built from a salvaged pipe and six faceless bodies fused into one; and a frame whose one diagonal carries every body, so that almost nothing in it can be removed.
Limiting Dimension
The Swerve and The Encompassed at 6.8: a practice perfected rather than turned, inside the field’s established means, its stake bodily and not formal; and a single frame that holds labour, the unit, the state and war, but not the person, the family, the enemy or the dead. Next above them, The Unconcealment and The Bottomless Well at 7.6: an emblem that conceals most of the condition it stands in, and a long return that opens the image’s history more than the image.
The Necessity Cap clears at 8.3 against a threshold of 7.5. The Coherence Floor clears: The Living Form at 8.0, The Made at 8.0, The Inner Law at 7.9, each against 7.0. The Epochal Gate is unmet on four of five: The Imperishable at 9.1 clears the bar of 8.5, but The Archetypal Deep at 8.4, Pressure on Tradition at 8.2, The Unconcealment at 7.6 and The Swerve at 6.8 fall short of it. The Universal Minimum is unmet at The Swerve, 6.8, below 7.5; The Encompassed, which it exempts, clears its own floor of 6.0 at 6.8. Three of the five summit conditions are met, the Necessity Cap, the Coherence Floor and the Megethos Floor. The twelve sum to 94.9, an average of 7.91 that displays 7.9. The work stands where its aggregate places it: in the band of Tier III, short of the 8.0 at which Tier IV begins and of the 9.0 that the summit requires.
Basis · a reading from knowledge of the photograph Joe Rosenthal (1911 to 2006) made for the Associated Press on the summit of Mount Suribachi, Iwo Jima, on 23 February 1945, and of how it was distributed and received; not from a vintage print in hand, and no image or written source was consulted. The work scored is the photograph of the second flag raising that morning, the negative as printed and distributed by the Associated Press, in its published vertical crop, black and white, with no fixed print size; no single print is the work. Rosenthal’s other frames of that morning, among them the posed group cheering under the flag, Sergeant Louis Lowery’s photographs of the first, smaller flag, and Sergeant Bill Genaust’s colour film of the same raising are context and are not scored. The Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington (Felix de Weldon, dedicated 1954), the Seventh War Loan poster and the postage stamp of 1945 are later works made from it, weighed as reach and presence and not scored. The photograph won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1945. The identities of the six raisers given in 1945 were corrected by the Marine Corps in 2016 and in 2019; the charge that the image was staged is stated as a charge, made and answered. No words are quoted; the title alone is given. Facts that could not be verified are not given, among them the hour of the exposure, the camera, the film and its size, the shutter speed and aperture, the stand Rosenthal is said to have built to gain height, the date of first publication in the newspapers, the names of the six raisers as now stated and of those named in 1945, the present condition and holding of the original negative, and the exact crop of the full negative.