Beaming faces pop out from an Avenger fighter pilot, as brigh- eyed gunners and pilots prime for action.
Marines stay low on a smoldering, eerie terrain, tentatively inching forward against suicidal resistance on Peleliu Island.
A sailor rests serenely on an aircraft carrier, his back arched with its curve, his composure as placid as the water’s level horizon beyond him.
This is World War II as you may never have viewed it, captured by the inimitable eye of renowned photographer Edward Steichen and his hand-picked Naval Photographic Unit, or “the Steichen Unit” as it was called.
It’s on view at a new exhibition, All Hands on Deck: Edward Steichen and the World War II Naval Photographic Unit. Curated by Tiffany Reed Silverman, who is also sirector of Fine Arts at the Citadel, it takes place at the college’s Moore Art Gallery.
Culled from Patriots Point Naval and Maritime Museum archives, as well as from a recent gift from the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), it offers a striking vantage of the war through the lens of one of the most celebrated photographers of the 20th century.
From runway to flight deck
When most cultural connoisseurs think of Steichen, their minds likely land on his irresistibly glamorous stills of subjects in sculpted dresses with perfect noses, a la his work for Vogue and Vanity Fair. Or they may know his tenure as MoMA’s director of the Department of Photography.
Few envision Captain J.J. “Jocko” Clark aboard the USS Yorktown or men in the throes of combat around the world.
The Yorktown connection paved the way for the current show. In 2023, a selection of the images from the Patriots Point museum were on view in The Men Will Always Be There: Edward Steichen and the Naval Photographic Unit.
Then more came Charleston’s way, with the donation to Patriots Point of some of the MoMa holdings that were part of the Steichen estate.
“MoMA … decided they’re just not getting seen and deeply researched,” Silverman said, explaining they were divided into smaller groups, with a set going to the World War II Museum in New Orleans and another to Patriots Point.
When the United States entered the war, Steichen’s World War I experience in the Signal Corps was working on reconnaissance photographs. But the 60-something man-about-Manhattan didn’t square with standard operating Naval procedures.
“When the Second World War came around, he raised his hand and he actually tried to get a commission in the army and they told him, ‘No, thanks, you’re too old,’ ” Silverman said.
The US Navy, however, was keen for pictorial representations of their flight capabilities for recruiting purposes. And no one could put an appealing face on a subject in quite the way that Steichen could.
His A-list Rolodex came in handy, too.
“He was able to get them published in … the press, maybe more so than someone without his extensive network would do,” she said.
Photographic proof
“The cool thing about those pieces is that several of them have Steichen’s touch on them,” Silverman said.
At the gallery, she excitedly gestures to a print featuring his green wax pencil marks, explaining that the photographer would have his unit members send him all of their film, writing specific notes to coax out the resulting epic takes.
While his previous urbane shots may have seemed worlds apart from soaring jets and military formations, his technical acumen and keen eye made for superior military material.
Whoever snapped the shutter, which is often hard to determine due to Navy protocals, Steichen’s eye was involved, evidenced in his urgings to “print deeper,” and offering a rare look under the hood of this seminal visual chronicler.
The exhibition points up his compositional brilliance by pairinig one image to the next — the perfect choreography of paratroopers descending a Douglas C-47 that is strikingly similar to the arc of a Japanese torpedo plummeting flames over Saipan.
On the flight deck of the Yorktown, two rows of pristine men flank Clark. Below it, an image captures U.S. rockets supporting Australian landings at Taraken Island, Borneo, in similarly methodical lines of fire advancing under a cloudy sky.
“What’s so beautiful about these images is that he is bringing that incredibly honed aesthetic to tell the stories of the military in a way that is going to make a civilian public sit up and take notice,” Silverman said.
The curator has already shown prints to some cadets. Many were visibly moved by the experience. For the first time, the war from their history books and family lore came into sharp relief.
If you want to go: On view through May 8 during gallery hours: Mon. to Fri., 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., Moore Art Gallery, Capers Hall, The Citadel, 171 Moultrie St. More: bit.ly/steichenallhandsondeck
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