Ralph Morse
Encyclopedia
Ralph Morse was a career staff photographer for Life magazine known for his inventive mind and his creative style. Encyclopedias and history books abound with his photos, as he has photographed some of the most widely seen pictures of World War II, the United States space program, and sports events. He is most celebrated for his multiple-exposure photographs. Morse's success as an improviser has led to his being considered Life magazine's specialist in technical photography. Former managing editor George P. Hunt declared that "If [the] equipment he needed didn't exist, [Morse] built it."
During his thirty years at Life, Morse covered every type of assignment from science to theater, from fads to spot news. When first hired by Life and sent to photograph World War II
, he was the youngest war correspondent
. His pictures documented the war's Pacific and European
theatres and the post-war reconstruction of Europe. Morse was the civilian photographer at the signing of the surrender by the Germans to General Dwight Eisenhower. He was the senior staff photographer at the time when Life ceased weekly publication.
Morse photographed the NASA
space program from its inception, an assignment which outlasted Life as a weekly magazine. On November 6, 2009 LIFE.com unveiled a photo retrospective of Project Mercury
, America's first human spaceflight program. Most of this photo collection is credited to Morse, as he had been exclusively assigned by Life to cover the space program. Over the early decades of the space program, Morse became an insider at NASA, providing him with the privileged access which helped produce some of the most iconic images of NASA projects. On July 15, 2009, LIFE.com published a photo gallery of never-before-seen photos Morse took of Buzz Aldrin
, Michael Collins
, and Neil Armstrong
in the days before their Apollo mission. In the gallery, Morse talks with Life about Apollo 11
and the astronauts who first landed on the moon.
Morse holds deeply the belief that photos lend a unique understanding to the world in which we live. Photographer Jim McNitt
, who worked with Morse on several Time magazine assignments in the 1970s, describes him as a fun-loving extrovert who was delighted to mentor an aspiring photojournalist. "Watching Ralph plan his shots, respond to editors, and deal with reluctant subjects with off-hand humor taught me things I couldn't learn in photo magazines or workshops," says McNitt. Former Life managing editor George P. Hunt proclaimed of Morse, "If Life could afford only one photographer, it would have to be Ralph Morse."
area of New York City
, he lived with his mother and sister in an apartment where the income was $25 a week. At fifteen, he starting working in a drug store delivering orders every afternoon, and at a soda fountain every evening until 11:00 pm, making soda and sandwiches for the public. At DeWitt Clinton High School
, he joined the school newspaper and was a dedicated student of journalism.
Aspiring to become a newsreel cameraman but lacking the requisite $1,000 to join the union, Morse instead entered the City College of New York
for free in 1939 and took every class offered in photography. Subsequently, Morse looked up photography in the business directory called the Manhattan Redbook. Starting with "A", he went door-to-door visiting all the listings until finally being hired at "P" by Paul Parker Studio. Paul Parker was a social photographer with such customers as the United Fund and the Red Cross, a type of photography of great interest to Morse. Paul Parker had a most fascinating capability of moving lights. Morse stayed with Parker for most of a year until hearing of a job of hanging lights for George Karger, a German banker turned photographer who was freelancing through Pix Publishing, an agency in New York that sold pictures around the world. Earning $6 a week, Morse worked with Karger for six months, at which time Morse realized that he had learned all that Karger had to offer. Then a job opened at Harper's Bazaar
. Morse only stayed at Harper's for a day, as he could not understand taking pictures that meant nothing to anyone outside the fashion industry.
As one who delivered photos to Pix on a daily basis, Morse was readily hired by Pix to work in their darkroom. The first weekend as a printer, Morse spent a day with friends at Jones Beach
on Long Island
. Not owning a camera, Morse borrowed a 35mm Contax from his friend Cornell Capa
, who was also a printer in the Pix publishing lab, as well as the brother of famous Life photographer Robert Capa
. At the beach, Morse happened upon a father throwing his baby into the air and catching him. Capturing the father and son on film, Morse immediately brought the pictures to Leon Daniel, the editor of Pix. Daniel proclaimed that Pix could sell the picture that very afternoon. Indeed, within an hour, Daniel had sold the photo to the Houston Chronicle
and then sold it to about twenty other publications in the world over the following week. Morse continued working in the dark room and continued taking pictures every weekend. Morse credits Leon Daniel as being the person who definitively encouraged him to become a professional photographer, as it was Daniel who urged Morse to just take pictures and let Pix sell them, noting that such an arrangement would be more lucrative both experientially and financially. Morse bought himself his first camera equipment and began buying The New York Times
everyday in order to select events to photograph, creating pictures which Daniel then sold instantly.
Of the three owners of Pix, one was a silent partner, Alfred Eisenstaedt
, the famous photographer who had left the Associated Press
in Germany to join the new Life magazine staff in New York City. Eisenstaedt closely observed Morse's photographing while encouraging Wilson Hicks, the picture editor of Life, to meet the young upstart at Pix. After weeks of Eisenstaedt's nagging, Hicks relented and asked to meet Morse. At their initial encounter, Hicks gave Morse his first assignment. Not at all sure how he would actually meet the demands of the most important picture editor in the United States, Morse covered up his fear with gratitude. Between his own and Capa's equipment, Morse was able to cover the author Thornton Wilder
's acting on Broadway
in his own show Our Town
. The success of this assignment earned him a second—capturing on film women buying hats for their husbands in the basement of Gimbels department store—which turned out to be Morse's first photo story published by Life. As a result, Hicks offered Morse a contract to work for Life one day a week through Pix, which amounted to about ten days a month of working for Life until the start of World War II.
, Morse's cameras recorded America's first amphibious
attack in the Pacific. He arranged for the captain of the USS Vincennes
, the Navy ship on which Morse had arrived, to deliver his film to Washington, D.C., as such pictures needed to be screened before being printed. Unfortunately, the Vincennes was torpedoed that night in the Battle of Savo Island
. Morse's film and equipment went down with the ship while he treaded water all night amidst destroyers dropping depth charges on submarines, fortunately scaring away the sharks and barracuda. With neither cameras nor clothing, Morse made a secret pact with Naval command to return briefly to Life in New York to re-equip, but was mandated to tell no details of the sea battle, no explanation of how he lost his equipment. Unknown to him, he was being trailed by Naval intelligence to confirm that he had kept his word. Guadalcanal grew a jungle so thick that accompanying nocturnal troop movement was filled with the risk of abandonment if one ever lost sight of the soldier's foot he was following.
During a daytime patrol, Morse came upon a burnt-out Japanese tank in a clearing with a skull and helmet on the fender. Life magazine and newspapers around the country ran Morse's photo; it proved to be the first horror picture released by the censors of World War II. Morse left the Pacific with not just an accommodation for his photo coverage from the United States Secretary of the Navy
, but also with a case of malaria. Upon being healed in a New York City hospital, he was re-assigned to photograph General George Patton's Army's traversing France.
He did a most comprehensive story of a wounded soldier by braving a request to the Surgeon General of the Army to certify him as wounded as well, so that he would become privy to all means of transportations, first aid stations, and hospitals as was his wounded man. Searching the battlefield between artillery shellings, he observed a corpsman as both arms were hit. Morse was witness to all the surgeries, fed him his meals, and, in time, poured penicillin into his wounds. The photos of this soldier in pain and his arms being placed in casts, considered a model of effective photojournalism, are the commonly used pictures of the wounded of World War II. Morse was witness to the invasion at Normandy
, air raids in Verdun
, General Charles de Gaulle
's peace parade in Paris, and Hermann Goring
's trial at Nuremberg
. He accompanied a Frenchman by open rail and hitched rides all the way from the German concentration camp where he had been enslaved back to the dinner table with the family members from whom he had been estranged for four years. He was the civilian photojournalist present at the signing of the surrender by the Germans at Reims.
astronaut John Glenn
as the eighth astronaut.
Conventional photography was sufficient at the onset of Morse's coverage of the space program which began as an introduction to Life readers of the astronauts themselves and their families; however, as the program grew in complexity from Project Mercury to Gemini
to Apollo, Morse needed to devise new ways to capture subject matter never before photographed. He illustrated subjects that no-one had ever seen. He did his homework, gathering the necessary knowledge to make the desired photograph. He invented his own techniques for images such as a rocket launch. He photographed double exposures, he shot with infrared cameras, he relied on motion detectors. Because he photographed with remote camera
, the results were dramatic as the cameras were so close to the rockets. He positioned a six-foot man next to a thirty-seven-story missile to show its scale.
, he brought a missile-tracking camera to the stadium. Forewarned that Jackie Robinson
would try to steal home, Morse rigged the camera with a foot switch set to fire a hundred feet of film at ten frames a second. With his hand-held camera focused on the outfield, Morse triggered the foot button as soon as energy mounted between Robinson and the pitcher. When Robinson made the dash, Morse's camera was already running.
Years before, Nat Fein
's Pulitzer Prize
-winning picture of the back of Babe Ruth
captured, as well, Morse kneeling and photographing Ruth from the front. As he stood addressing the public, and visibly weakened by cancer, Ruth leaned on his bat as a crutch. Morse chose to illustrate the somber mood of the dying hero's farewell by using color film, despite its being new and still slow in reproduction. Morse's shot of Ruth's downcast eyes with stands of fans in the background was distinctively captured in muted color tones. In response to Morse's being assigned to produce a picture that would show in one image Hank Aaron's entire 715th home run, he and fellow Life photographer Henry Groskinsky planned a multiple exposure of the pitch along with Aaron's hitting the homer, touching each base, and being congratulated by his team mates in the dugout. To make this photograph, they used a 4 X 5 view camera
with strips of black paper mounted on a glass in front of the lens. As Aaron approached each of the locations to be photographed, a section of the black covering was lifted from the glass, allowing an exposure to be made.
Technically similar, in covering the hundred yard dash in New York's Madison Square Garden
, Morse wanted to put the start, middle, and finish of the race in the same picture. He was able to place wiring under the track, but no place existed for situating the cameras. Morse had a hanging box built under the balcony in which he mounted his equipment. His assistant tripped the lights at the required intervals, and Morse made the photograph.
the exact number of daily cancer-inducing cigarettes. Morse laid the smoked butts on a plate of glass and snapped a photo. Then he superimposed onto the same photographic plate a model silhouetted against black paper, blowing smoke out of her mouth.
Just as with the astronauts, developing friendships with the medical people he was photographing opened doors for Morse that would have been closed to others. To illustrate an article about the schism between two Houston heart surgeons, Drs. Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley
, Morse photographed each of them alone against the same dark backdrop, presumably unknown to each other, on the same frame of film. The double exposure of the dueling doctors back-to-back became a Life magazine cover.
Previously, when first photographing Dr. Cooley transplanting human hearts, Morse asked whether anyone had ever seen his own heart. Morse located a patient's recently removed heart floating in a jar of formaldehyde, and photographed Man's seeing his own heart for the first time. His previous experience with Dr. DeBakey occurred when the need for transplants outnumbered available cadaver hearts. When DeBakey was about to put a man-made left ventricle into a dying man's chest cavity for the first time, Morse requested to be present on the floor. DeBakey explained that the American Medical Association
would not allow an outsider's presence in the operating room. The photograph was made when DeBakey hired Morse as a temporary hospital staff member for a dollar. In the deal, DeBakey gained ownership of the pictures, and Life had the right to publish them.
in New York City. When schedules permitted, the family joined Morse on his photographic assignments, including journeys to Cape Canaveral, Florida
to watch missiles being launched. Morse retired to south Florida where he enjoys sailing and boating, spending time with his companion Barbara Ohlstein, his six grandchildren, and his three great-grandchildren.
, this award is the highest honor in the field of photojournalism. Morse was the recipient of the 2010 Briton Hadden Life-Time Achievement Award for his World War II photographs.
During his thirty years at Life, Morse covered every type of assignment from science to theater, from fads to spot news. When first hired by Life and sent to photograph World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
, he was the youngest war correspondent
War correspondent
A war correspondent is a journalist who covers stories firsthand from a war zone. In the 19th century they were also called Special Correspondents.-Methods:...
. His pictures documented the war's Pacific and European
European Theatre of World War II
The European Theatre of World War II was a huge area of heavy fighting across Europe from Germany's invasion of Poland on September 1, 1939 until the end of the war with the German unconditional surrender on May 8, 1945...
theatres and the post-war reconstruction of Europe. Morse was the civilian photographer at the signing of the surrender by the Germans to General Dwight Eisenhower. He was the senior staff photographer at the time when Life ceased weekly publication.
Morse photographed the NASA
NASA
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration is the agency of the United States government that is responsible for the nation's civilian space program and for aeronautics and aerospace research...
space program from its inception, an assignment which outlasted Life as a weekly magazine. On November 6, 2009 LIFE.com unveiled a photo retrospective of Project Mercury
Project Mercury
In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...
, America's first human spaceflight program. Most of this photo collection is credited to Morse, as he had been exclusively assigned by Life to cover the space program. Over the early decades of the space program, Morse became an insider at NASA, providing him with the privileged access which helped produce some of the most iconic images of NASA projects. On July 15, 2009, LIFE.com published a photo gallery of never-before-seen photos Morse took of Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin
Buzz Aldrin is an American mechanical engineer, retired United States Air Force pilot and astronaut who was the Lunar Module pilot on Apollo 11, the first manned lunar landing in history...
, Michael Collins
Michael Collins (astronaut)
Michael Collins is a former American astronaut and test pilot. Selected as part of the third group of fourteen astronauts in 1963, he flew in space twice. His first spaceflight was Gemini 10, in which he and command pilot John Young performed two rendezvous with different spacecraft and Collins...
, and Neil Armstrong
Neil Armstrong
Neil Alden Armstrong is an American former astronaut, test pilot, aerospace engineer, university professor, United States Naval Aviator, and the first person to set foot upon the Moon....
in the days before their Apollo mission. In the gallery, Morse talks with Life about Apollo 11
Apollo 11
In early 1969, Bill Anders accepted a job with the National Space Council effective in August 1969 and announced his retirement as an astronaut. At that point Ken Mattingly was moved from the support crew into parallel training with Anders as backup Command Module Pilot in case Apollo 11 was...
and the astronauts who first landed on the moon.
Morse holds deeply the belief that photos lend a unique understanding to the world in which we live. Photographer Jim McNitt
Jim McNitt
Jim McNitt is an American painter and photographer, published in Time, Newsweek, People, The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, Stern , Paris Match, Yachting, Sail, Boating, Time-Life Books, Modern Photography, and on numerous magazine and book covers...
, who worked with Morse on several Time magazine assignments in the 1970s, describes him as a fun-loving extrovert who was delighted to mentor an aspiring photojournalist. "Watching Ralph plan his shots, respond to editors, and deal with reluctant subjects with off-hand humor taught me things I couldn't learn in photo magazines or workshops," says McNitt. Former Life managing editor George P. Hunt proclaimed of Morse, "If Life could afford only one photographer, it would have to be Ralph Morse."
Early life
Ralph Morse had humble roots. Born in Manhattan and raised in the BronxThe Bronx
The Bronx is the northernmost of the five boroughs of New York City. It is also known as Bronx County, the last of the 62 counties of New York State to be incorporated...
area of New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, he lived with his mother and sister in an apartment where the income was $25 a week. At fifteen, he starting working in a drug store delivering orders every afternoon, and at a soda fountain every evening until 11:00 pm, making soda and sandwiches for the public. At DeWitt Clinton High School
DeWitt Clinton High School
DeWitt Clinton High School is an American high school located in the Bronx, New York City, New York.-History:Clinton opened in 1897 at 60 West 13th Street at the northern end of Greenwich Village under the name of Boys High School, although this Boys High School was not related to the one in Brooklyn...
, he joined the school newspaper and was a dedicated student of journalism.
Aspiring to become a newsreel cameraman but lacking the requisite $1,000 to join the union, Morse instead entered the City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
for free in 1939 and took every class offered in photography. Subsequently, Morse looked up photography in the business directory called the Manhattan Redbook. Starting with "A", he went door-to-door visiting all the listings until finally being hired at "P" by Paul Parker Studio. Paul Parker was a social photographer with such customers as the United Fund and the Red Cross, a type of photography of great interest to Morse. Paul Parker had a most fascinating capability of moving lights. Morse stayed with Parker for most of a year until hearing of a job of hanging lights for George Karger, a German banker turned photographer who was freelancing through Pix Publishing, an agency in New York that sold pictures around the world. Earning $6 a week, Morse worked with Karger for six months, at which time Morse realized that he had learned all that Karger had to offer. Then a job opened at Harper's Bazaar
Harper's Bazaar
Harper’s Bazaar is an American fashion magazine, first published in 1867. Harper’s Bazaar is published by Hearst and, as a magazine, considers itself to be the style resource for “women who are the first to buy the best, from casual to couture.”...
. Morse only stayed at Harper's for a day, as he could not understand taking pictures that meant nothing to anyone outside the fashion industry.
As one who delivered photos to Pix on a daily basis, Morse was readily hired by Pix to work in their darkroom. The first weekend as a printer, Morse spent a day with friends at Jones Beach
Jones Beach
Jones Beach may refer to:* A barrier island off the coast of Long Island, New York:**Jones Beach State Park in Nassau County, New York in the United States**Jones Beach Island**Nikon at Jones Beach Theater...
on Long Island
Long Island
Long Island is an island located in the southeast part of the U.S. state of New York, just east of Manhattan. Stretching northeast into the Atlantic Ocean, Long Island contains four counties, two of which are boroughs of New York City , and two of which are mainly suburban...
. Not owning a camera, Morse borrowed a 35mm Contax from his friend Cornell Capa
Cornell Capa
Cornell Capa was a Hungarian American photographer, member of Magnum Photos, and photo curator, and the younger brother of photo-journalist and war photographer Robert Capa. Graduating from Imre Madách Gymnasium in Budapest, he initially intended to study medicine, but instead joined his brother...
, who was also a printer in the Pix publishing lab, as well as the brother of famous Life photographer Robert Capa
Robert Capa
Robert Capa was a Hungarian combat photographer and photojournalist who covered five different wars: the Spanish Civil War, the Second Sino-Japanese War, World War II across Europe, the 1948 Arab-Israeli War, and the First Indochina War...
. At the beach, Morse happened upon a father throwing his baby into the air and catching him. Capturing the father and son on film, Morse immediately brought the pictures to Leon Daniel, the editor of Pix. Daniel proclaimed that Pix could sell the picture that very afternoon. Indeed, within an hour, Daniel had sold the photo to the Houston Chronicle
Houston Chronicle
The Houston Chronicle is the largest daily newspaper in Texas, USA, headquartered in the Houston Chronicle Building in Downtown Houston. , it is the ninth-largest newspaper by circulation in the United States...
and then sold it to about twenty other publications in the world over the following week. Morse continued working in the dark room and continued taking pictures every weekend. Morse credits Leon Daniel as being the person who definitively encouraged him to become a professional photographer, as it was Daniel who urged Morse to just take pictures and let Pix sell them, noting that such an arrangement would be more lucrative both experientially and financially. Morse bought himself his first camera equipment and began buying The New York Times
The New York Times
The New York Times is an American daily newspaper founded and continuously published in New York City since 1851. The New York Times has won 106 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any news organization...
everyday in order to select events to photograph, creating pictures which Daniel then sold instantly.
Of the three owners of Pix, one was a silent partner, Alfred Eisenstaedt
Alfred Eisenstaedt
Alfred Eisenstaedt was a German-American photographer and photojournalist. He is renowned for his candid photographs, frequently made using various models of a 35mm Leica rangefinder camera...
, the famous photographer who had left the Associated Press
Associated Press
The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...
in Germany to join the new Life magazine staff in New York City. Eisenstaedt closely observed Morse's photographing while encouraging Wilson Hicks, the picture editor of Life, to meet the young upstart at Pix. After weeks of Eisenstaedt's nagging, Hicks relented and asked to meet Morse. At their initial encounter, Hicks gave Morse his first assignment. Not at all sure how he would actually meet the demands of the most important picture editor in the United States, Morse covered up his fear with gratitude. Between his own and Capa's equipment, Morse was able to cover the author Thornton Wilder
Thornton Wilder
Thornton Niven Wilder was an American playwright and novelist. He received three Pulitzer Prizes, one for his novel The Bridge of San Luis Rey and two for his plays Our Town and The Skin of Our Teeth, and a National Book Award for his novel The Eighth Day.-Early years:Wilder was born in Madison,...
's acting on Broadway
Broadway theatre
Broadway theatre, commonly called simply Broadway, refers to theatrical performances presented in one of the 40 professional theatres with 500 or more seats located in the Theatre District centered along Broadway, and in Lincoln Center, in Manhattan in New York City...
in his own show Our Town
Our Town
Our Town is a three-act play by American playwright Thornton Wilder. It is a character story about an average town's citizens in the early twentieth century as depicted through their everyday lives...
. The success of this assignment earned him a second—capturing on film women buying hats for their husbands in the basement of Gimbels department store—which turned out to be Morse's first photo story published by Life. As a result, Hicks offered Morse a contract to work for Life one day a week through Pix, which amounted to about ten days a month of working for Life until the start of World War II.
War correspondent
At 24, Morse was the youngest war correspondent when Life hired him full time in 1942 and sent him to the Pacific Theatre of World War II. He immediately learned that not all of his photos would end up in print, as his first war assignment turned out to be a secret mission. War coverage was the ultimate on-the-job training, needing to learn on the spot such feats as descending rope ladders overloaded with both combat and photographic gear in order to accompany troops from ship to shore. Landing with the Marines on GuadalcanalGuadalcanal
Guadalcanal is a tropical island in the South-Western Pacific. The largest island in the Solomons, it was discovered by the Spanish expedition of Alvaro de Mendaña in 1568...
, Morse's cameras recorded America's first amphibious
Amphibious warfare
Amphibious warfare is the use of naval firepower, logistics and strategy to project military power ashore. In previous eras it stood as the primary method of delivering troops to non-contiguous enemy-held terrain...
attack in the Pacific. He arranged for the captain of the USS Vincennes
USS Vincennes
Four United States Navy ships have been named USS Vincennes, after the town of Vincennes, Indiana, site of an important Patriot victory in the American Revolution....
, the Navy ship on which Morse had arrived, to deliver his film to Washington, D.C., as such pictures needed to be screened before being printed. Unfortunately, the Vincennes was torpedoed that night in the Battle of Savo Island
Battle of Savo Island
The Battle of Savo Island, also known as the First Battle of Savo Island and, in Japanese sources, as the , was a naval battle of the Pacific Campaign of World War II, between the Imperial Japanese Navy and Allied naval forces...
. Morse's film and equipment went down with the ship while he treaded water all night amidst destroyers dropping depth charges on submarines, fortunately scaring away the sharks and barracuda. With neither cameras nor clothing, Morse made a secret pact with Naval command to return briefly to Life in New York to re-equip, but was mandated to tell no details of the sea battle, no explanation of how he lost his equipment. Unknown to him, he was being trailed by Naval intelligence to confirm that he had kept his word. Guadalcanal grew a jungle so thick that accompanying nocturnal troop movement was filled with the risk of abandonment if one ever lost sight of the soldier's foot he was following.
During a daytime patrol, Morse came upon a burnt-out Japanese tank in a clearing with a skull and helmet on the fender. Life magazine and newspapers around the country ran Morse's photo; it proved to be the first horror picture released by the censors of World War II. Morse left the Pacific with not just an accommodation for his photo coverage from the United States Secretary of the Navy
United States Secretary of the Navy
The Secretary of the Navy of the United States of America is the head of the Department of the Navy, a component organization of the Department of Defense...
, but also with a case of malaria. Upon being healed in a New York City hospital, he was re-assigned to photograph General George Patton's Army's traversing France.
He did a most comprehensive story of a wounded soldier by braving a request to the Surgeon General of the Army to certify him as wounded as well, so that he would become privy to all means of transportations, first aid stations, and hospitals as was his wounded man. Searching the battlefield between artillery shellings, he observed a corpsman as both arms were hit. Morse was witness to all the surgeries, fed him his meals, and, in time, poured penicillin into his wounds. The photos of this soldier in pain and his arms being placed in casts, considered a model of effective photojournalism, are the commonly used pictures of the wounded of World War II. Morse was witness to the invasion at Normandy
Normandy
Normandy is a geographical region corresponding to the former Duchy of Normandy. It is in France.The continental territory covers 30,627 km² and forms the preponderant part of Normandy and roughly 5% of the territory of France. It is divided for administrative purposes into two régions:...
, air raids in Verdun
Verdun
Verdun is a city in the Meuse department in Lorraine in north-eastern France. It is a sub-prefecture of the department.Verdun is the biggest city in Meuse, although the capital of the department is the slightly smaller city of Bar-le-Duc.- History :...
, General Charles de Gaulle
Charles de Gaulle
Charles André Joseph Marie de Gaulle was a French general and statesman who led the Free French Forces during World War II. He later founded the French Fifth Republic in 1958 and served as its first President from 1959 to 1969....
's peace parade in Paris, and Hermann Goring
Hermann Göring
Hermann Wilhelm Göring, was a German politician, military leader, and a leading member of the Nazi Party. He was a veteran of World War I as an ace fighter pilot, and a recipient of the coveted Pour le Mérite, also known as "The Blue Max"...
's trial at Nuremberg
Nuremberg
Nuremberg[p] is a city in the German state of Bavaria, in the administrative region of Middle Franconia. Situated on the Pegnitz river and the Rhine–Main–Danube Canal, it is located about north of Munich and is Franconia's largest city. The population is 505,664...
. He accompanied a Frenchman by open rail and hitched rides all the way from the German concentration camp where he had been enslaved back to the dinner table with the family members from whom he had been estranged for four years. He was the civilian photojournalist present at the signing of the surrender by the Germans at Reims.
Eighth astronaut
A decade after photographing the post-war reconstruction of Europe, Morse received his next singular assignment: documenting American preparations to explore outer space. He spoke to the science and managing editors of Life, recommending that one reporter and one photographer go everywhere and do everything in which the astronauts were engaged. The editors chose Morse for the job, launching a thirty-year assignment and life-long friendships between Morse and the astronauts and their families. After years of joining the astronauts as they trained—flying weightless, diving undersea, studying rocks, surviving deserts and jungles—Morse was dubbed by MercuryProject Mercury
In January 1960 NASA awarded Western Electric Company a contract for the Mercury tracking network. The value of the contract was over $33 million. Also in January, McDonnell delivered the first production-type Mercury spacecraft, less than a year after award of the formal contract. On February 12,...
astronaut John Glenn
John Glenn
John Herschel Glenn, Jr. is a former United States Marine Corps pilot, astronaut, and United States senator who was the first American to orbit the Earth and the third American in space. Glenn was a Marine Corps fighter pilot before joining NASA's Mercury program as a member of NASA's original...
as the eighth astronaut.
Conventional photography was sufficient at the onset of Morse's coverage of the space program which began as an introduction to Life readers of the astronauts themselves and their families; however, as the program grew in complexity from Project Mercury to Gemini
Project Gemini
Project Gemini was the second human spaceflight program of NASA, the civilian space agency of the United States government. Project Gemini was conducted between projects Mercury and Apollo, with ten manned flights occurring in 1965 and 1966....
to Apollo, Morse needed to devise new ways to capture subject matter never before photographed. He illustrated subjects that no-one had ever seen. He did his homework, gathering the necessary knowledge to make the desired photograph. He invented his own techniques for images such as a rocket launch. He photographed double exposures, he shot with infrared cameras, he relied on motion detectors. Because he photographed with remote camera
Remote camera
A remote camera is a camera placed by a photographer in areas where the photographer generally cannot be. This includes areas with limited access, tight spaces where a person is not allowed, or just another angle so that the photographer can simultaneously take pictures of the same moment from...
, the results were dramatic as the cameras were so close to the rockets. He positioned a six-foot man next to a thirty-seven-story missile to show its scale.
Sports historian
The equipment Morse used for showing the space program served him well on his other assignments, also. When he photographed the Brooklyn Dodgers in the 1955 World Series1955 World Series
The 1955 World Series matched the Brooklyn Dodgers against the New York Yankees, with the Dodgers winning the Series in seven games to capture their first championship in franchise history. It would be the only Series the Dodgers won in Brooklyn . The last time the Brooklyn franchise won a World...
, he brought a missile-tracking camera to the stadium. Forewarned that Jackie Robinson
Jackie Robinson
Jack Roosevelt "Jackie" Robinson was the first black Major League Baseball player of the modern era. Robinson broke the baseball color line when he debuted with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947...
would try to steal home, Morse rigged the camera with a foot switch set to fire a hundred feet of film at ten frames a second. With his hand-held camera focused on the outfield, Morse triggered the foot button as soon as energy mounted between Robinson and the pitcher. When Robinson made the dash, Morse's camera was already running.
Years before, Nat Fein
Nat Fein
Nathaniel Fein was an American Press Photographer for the New York Herald Tribune for thirty-three years....
's Pulitzer Prize
Pulitzer Prize
The Pulitzer Prize is a U.S. award for achievements in newspaper and online journalism, literature and musical composition. It was established by American publisher Joseph Pulitzer and is administered by Columbia University in New York City...
-winning picture of the back of Babe Ruth
Babe Ruth
George Herman Ruth, Jr. , best known as "Babe" Ruth and nicknamed "the Bambino" and "the Sultan of Swat", was an American Major League baseball player from 1914–1935...
captured, as well, Morse kneeling and photographing Ruth from the front. As he stood addressing the public, and visibly weakened by cancer, Ruth leaned on his bat as a crutch. Morse chose to illustrate the somber mood of the dying hero's farewell by using color film, despite its being new and still slow in reproduction. Morse's shot of Ruth's downcast eyes with stands of fans in the background was distinctively captured in muted color tones. In response to Morse's being assigned to produce a picture that would show in one image Hank Aaron's entire 715th home run, he and fellow Life photographer Henry Groskinsky planned a multiple exposure of the pitch along with Aaron's hitting the homer, touching each base, and being congratulated by his team mates in the dugout. To make this photograph, they used a 4 X 5 view camera
View camera
The view camera is a type of camera first developed in the era of the Daguerreotype and still in use today, though with many refinements. It comprises a flexible bellows which forms a light-tight seal between two adjustable standards, one of which holds a lens, and the other a viewfinder or a...
with strips of black paper mounted on a glass in front of the lens. As Aaron approached each of the locations to be photographed, a section of the black covering was lifted from the glass, allowing an exposure to be made.
Technically similar, in covering the hundred yard dash in New York's Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden
Madison Square Garden, often abbreviated as MSG and known colloquially as The Garden, is a multi-purpose indoor arena in the New York City borough of Manhattan and located at 8th Avenue, between 31st and 33rd Streets, situated on top of Pennsylvania Station.Opened on February 11, 1968, it is the...
, Morse wanted to put the start, middle, and finish of the race in the same picture. He was able to place wiring under the track, but no place existed for situating the cameras. Morse had a hanging box built under the balcony in which he mounted his equipment. His assistant tripped the lights at the required intervals, and Morse made the photograph.
Medical recorder
Morse also documented breakthroughs in the field of medicine. In response to the US Surgeon General's decree that smoking caused lung cancer, Morse obtained from the American Cancer SocietyAmerican Cancer Society
The American Cancer Society is the "nationwide community-based voluntary health organization" dedicated, in their own words, "to eliminating cancer as a major health problem by preventing cancer, saving lives, and diminishing suffering from cancer, through research, education, advocacy, and...
the exact number of daily cancer-inducing cigarettes. Morse laid the smoked butts on a plate of glass and snapped a photo. Then he superimposed onto the same photographic plate a model silhouetted against black paper, blowing smoke out of her mouth.
Just as with the astronauts, developing friendships with the medical people he was photographing opened doors for Morse that would have been closed to others. To illustrate an article about the schism between two Houston heart surgeons, Drs. Michael DeBakey and Denton Cooley
Denton Cooley
Denton Arthur Cooley is an American heart surgeon famous for performing the first implantation of a total artificial heart. Cooley is also founder and surgeon in-chief of the Texas Heart Institute, chief of Cardiovascular Surgery at St...
, Morse photographed each of them alone against the same dark backdrop, presumably unknown to each other, on the same frame of film. The double exposure of the dueling doctors back-to-back became a Life magazine cover.
Previously, when first photographing Dr. Cooley transplanting human hearts, Morse asked whether anyone had ever seen his own heart. Morse located a patient's recently removed heart floating in a jar of formaldehyde, and photographed Man's seeing his own heart for the first time. His previous experience with Dr. DeBakey occurred when the need for transplants outnumbered available cadaver hearts. When DeBakey was about to put a man-made left ventricle into a dying man's chest cavity for the first time, Morse requested to be present on the floor. DeBakey explained that the American Medical Association
American Medical Association
The American Medical Association , founded in 1847 and incorporated in 1897, is the largest association of medical doctors and medical students in the United States.-Scope and operations:...
would not allow an outsider's presence in the operating room. The photograph was made when DeBakey hired Morse as a temporary hospital staff member for a dollar. In the deal, DeBakey gained ownership of the pictures, and Life had the right to publish them.
Family life
Morse and the late Ruth Zizmor Morse lived in Paris after World War II while he photographed the post-war reconstruction of Europe. Later, they settled in northern New Jersey, where they raised their three sons, Alan, Bob, and Don, as Morse's work was based out of the Time-Life BuildingTime-Life Building
The Time-Life Building, located at 1271 Avenue of the Americas in Rockefeller Center in New York opened in 1959 and was designed by the Rockefeller family's architect Wallace Harrison, of Harrison, Abramovitz, and Harris.The Time & Life Building was the first of four buildings in Rockefeller...
in New York City. When schedules permitted, the family joined Morse on his photographic assignments, including journeys to Cape Canaveral, Florida
Cape Canaveral, Florida
Cape Canaveral is a city in Brevard County, Florida, United States. The population was 8,829 at the 2000 census. As of 2008, the estimated population according to the U.S. Census Bureau was 10,147...
to watch missiles being launched. Morse retired to south Florida where he enjoys sailing and boating, spending time with his companion Barbara Ohlstein, his six grandchildren, and his three great-grandchildren.
Awards
"Were it not for [Morse's] eye, his ingenuity, and his nose for news, we wouldn't have this great visual record of our nation's greatest achievements." It was his creativity which made Morse so valuable, and qualified him for some thirty awards. He received the 1995 Joseph A. Sprague Memorial Award. According to the National Press Photographers AssociationNational Press Photographers Association
NPPA is the acronym for the National Press Photographers Association, founded in 1947. The organization is based in Durham, North Carolina and its mostly made up of still photographers, television videographers, editors, and students in the journalism field...
, this award is the highest honor in the field of photojournalism. Morse was the recipient of the 2010 Briton Hadden Life-Time Achievement Award for his World War II photographs.