Joe O'Donnell (photojournalist)
Joseph Roger "Joe" O'Donnell (May 7, 1922 – August 9, 2007) was an American documentarian, photojournalist and a photographer for the United States Information Agency.
Joe O'Donnell | |
---|---|
Born | Johnstown, Pennsylvania | May 7, 1922
Died | August 9, 2007 85) Nashville, Tennessee | (aged
Occupation | photojournalist |
Nationality | American |
Life
Born in Johnstown, Pennsylvania, his most famous work was documenting photographically the immediate aftermath of the atomic bomb explosions at Nagasaki and Hiroshima, Japan, in 1945 and 1946 as a Marine photographer.
Controversy
A controversy followed the printing of his obituary in the press. Some of the photographs that had been attributed to O'Donnell were actually shot by other photographers.[1] A photograph of a saluting John F. Kennedy Jr. during the funeral for his father in 1963 was taken by Stan Stearns for United Press International, not by O'Donnell. O'Donnell also claimed credit for a photograph showing Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during a wartime meeting in Tehran, Iran, in 1943, but O'Donnell is not known to have been in Tehran at the time.[2]
O'Donnell's son Tyge O'Donnell attributes some of the instances of his father's taking credit for others' work to the onset of dementia in the 1990s.
References
- Wilson, Michael (September 15, 2007), "Known for Famous Photos, Not All of Them His", The New York Times
- "The Bizarre Story of Joe O'Donnell by Marianne Fulton - The Digital Journalist (August 2007)". 2008-05-31. Archived from the original on May 31, 2008. Retrieved 2016-02-04.
External links
- AP article on the photo controversy by Travis Loller
- The Times Obituary
- Japan 1945--A U.S. Marine’s Photographs from Ground Zero, photos by Joe O'Donnell Nashville: Vanderbilt University Press, 2005.
- "Historical and Cultural Context for Joe O’Donnell’s Japan 1945: A U.S. Marine’s Photographs from Ground Zero." Presentation by John Frank, Center Grove, Indiana
- Info from a pending documentary of Joe O'Donnell by David Tower
- Editor & Publisher article on the obituary controversy by Greg Mitchell
- "Post-war photos from Japan in 1945 opens at AMSE" Announcement for 2013 Smithsonian Institution photo exhibition, published February 13.
- Clark Hoyt, "Pictures Worth a Thousand Questions", New York Times, September 16, 2007