Steichen's Naval Aviation Photographic Unit.

Edward Steichen formed the United States Navy’s Naval Aviation Photographic Unit in 1942, after the United States entered the Second World War. Steichen, born in 1879 and already established internationally through art, portrait, fashion and commercial photography, had also directed aerial photography operations for the United States Army during the First World War. Commissioned as a Lieutenant Commander in the United States Naval Reserve, he was initially placed under Captain Arthur W. Radford in the Bureau of Aeronautics. The unit’s first assignment was to produce photographs of naval aviation, particularly material that could support recruitment and public information as the Navy rapidly expanded its air arm. Steichen recruited photographers for their established visual abilities rather than relying only upon conventional military photographic personnel. The group developed into a mobile photographic operation whose members were given access to ships, aircraft, bases and operational areas. As the war progressed, its remit expanded from aviation training and publicity to a broader record of naval warfare. Its photographers worked aboard aircraft carriers and other vessels and travelled through the Pacific, the Aleutian Islands, North Africa and Europe. During the final months of the war Steichen was given responsibility for Navy combat photography more generally, extending his influence beyond his original unit to the Navy’s larger photographic organisation.

The photographers whose work forms this selection represent the principal figures associated with Steichen’s operation: Commander Edward Steichen, Lieutenant Charles E. Kerlee, Lieutenant Wayne Miller, Lieutenant Barrett Gallagher, Lieutenant Commander Charles Fenno Jacobs, Lieutenant Commander Horace Bristol, Lieutenant Paul Dorsey and Lieutenant Victor Jorgensen. They did not work permanently as one fixed crew, but received assignments that produced different strands of the Navy’s photographic record. Bristol photographed the Aleutian campaign and operations around Attu as well as carrier aviation. Jacobs photographed subjects ranging from aircraft production and women working in wartime industry to submarines, aviation cadets and daily life aboard USS New Jersey. Kerlee photographed aircraft, airships and carrier operations, while Miller worked extensively aboard aircraft carriers in the Pacific and later photographed Guam, Japan and Hiroshima. Gallagher photographed carrier and fleet operations during the later stages of the Pacific war, while Dorsey documented operations in the Mariana Islands, including Saipan and Guam. Jorgensen worked aboard carriers and recorded both operational activity and the daily experience of sailors, while Steichen himself continued photographing alongside his role directing the unit. Their assignments collectively covered industrial production, training, preparation, combat operations, casualties, maintenance, recreation and the routines of shipboard life.

Steichen’s approach centred on people as much as ships and aircraft. Rather than producing only technical records of military equipment, the photographers were encouraged to concentrate on sailors, pilots, mechanics, deck crews and other personnel whose work made naval aviation function. This resulted in photographs made at close range on flight decks, inside ships and aircraft, in workshops and during operations, alongside formal portraits, aerial photographs and records of combat. The resulting pictures served several purposes during the war, including recruitment, public information, historical documentation and publication. They also became exhibition material. Steichen organised the Museum of Modern Art exhibition Power in the Pacific in 1945 using photographs of the Pacific war, and photographs produced by the unit were subsequently reproduced in books and other publications. The unit operated until 1945 and was largely demobilised following the end of the war. A substantial body of its work survives in United States government collections, particularly the National Archives, while other groups of prints entered museum and photographic collections. Collectively, the surviving photographs provide a record not simply of naval aviation technology but of how a group of established photographers applied documentary and editorial photographic methods to the activities of the wartime United States Navy.

Edward Steichen

MoMA

Music
Sweet Dreams, Sunray - 369

Photographs produced by the United States Navy Naval Aviation Photographic Unit during the Second World War. These official United States Government photographs are in the public domain.

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