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Your search found 61 records from all Smithsonian Institution collections.
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- Description
- By the fall of 1963, President Kennedy and his political advisers were preparing for the next presidential campaign. Although he had not formally announced his candidacy, it was clear that Kennedy was going to run for office and he seemed confident about his chances for reelection. On November 22, riding in a motorcade procession through downtown Dallas, Kennedy was shot.
- According to the New York Times obituary of Mydans, Carl was one of the last photographers to reach LIFE magazine's offices after Kennedy's assassination. Since he was not awarded a clear assignment, Mydans wandered over to Grand Central Station and, on a whim, boarded a train north, headed to Stamford, Connecticut. The emotional intensity of the moment captured in this picture helped make it one of his most memorable images from all his years with LIFE.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1963
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.158
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.158
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- Description
- After covering the Italian and French campaigns of 1944, Mydans was sent back to the Pacific that November. Although he photographed some of the Leyte campaign, he missed General MacArthur's famous return to the Philippines. On January 9, 1945, Mydans photographed MacArthur as he landed in Luzon. According to Mydans, MacArthur did not believe in posed pictures: No one I have ever known in public life had a better understanding of the drama and power of a picture.
- When the time came, Mydans jumped out of the boat unto the pontoon walkway set up for MacArthur's arrival only to see the craft reverse its engines and back away. Mydans quickly ran across the beach and waited for the boat to come to him. Once the ramp dropped, he photographed MacArthur knee-deep in the water as he waded ashore, thus creating one of his most memorable shots. The image was taken just five hours after the first wave assault on the beach. Mydans was the only still photographer to accompany General MacArthur on the U.S.S. Boise, his command ship, during the invasion of Luzon. Many years after that landing, Mydans shared an intimate moment with MacArthur upon their return to Luzon. After standing on Lingayen Beach in front of a plaque commemorating the event, MacArthur walked over to Mydans and said, "This is the highlight of it all, isn't it? For you and me." (LIFE, July 14, 1961).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1945-01-09
- 1945
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.069
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.069
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- Description
- To sign the surrender that would officially end World War II, a small delegation of Japanese diplomats and military personnel appeared promptly at 8:55 a.m. on Sunday, September 2, 1945. Their faces expressionless, Foreign Minister Mamoru Shigemitsu and Gen. Yoshijiro Umezu stood side by side.
- Shigemitsu leaned heavily on his cane in order to support the artificial leg, the result of a bomb that had been thrown at him years before in Shanghai. Shigemitsu awkwardly sat down and took off his hat and a glove before signing his name and signing for Emperor Hirohito.
- General Umezu followed, but unlike the rest, he signed standing up. With their signatures, both men bound Japan to accept the Potsdam Declaration: to surrender all forces unconditionally, free all military prisoners, and make all Japanese officials, including the Emperor, subservient to General MacArthur.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1945
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.085
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.085
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- Description
- In 1938 photographer Carl Mydans set off on his travels around the United States once more, making stops in Alabama, Maryland, Virginia, and Texas. He captured images of farmers and cowboys, as well as passersby on sidewalks and women in department stores shopping for the latest fashions. This time, he was on assignment for LIFE magazine, instead of the Resettlement Administration.
- In this photograph, Mydans accentuates the sharp contrast between the rural and urban lifestyles during the late 1930s in Dallas, Texas. In the background, high-rise buildings, billboard advertisements, and factories remind the viewer of progressive industrialization and how mechanized labor was replacing manual labor. Workers and farmers, such as Lucius Washington, faced hard times during this decade.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1939
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.047
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.047
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- Description
- After joining the photographic unit of the Resettlement Administration in 1935, Carl Mydans was sent to document the living conditions of ordinary Americans in their urban settings. In New York City, housing shortages and the lack of relief aid offered to the unemployed during the Great Depression led homeless people to seek refuge among the rubble of the city. During the cold winter, four men huddled around a makeshift fire on the side of the street to warm themselves.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- Winter 1935
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.001
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.001
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- Description
- While traveling through Texas capturing images for his photo essay, Mydans focused not only on the prosperous cowboys on the range, but also on the displaced population that was still struggling to find jobs amidst a national economic crisis.
- Migrant workers like this man, whom Mydans found living with his family by the side of the road near Raymondville, Texas, were called "brush-hogs." It was estimated that this type of permanent migrant worker, without a home, voting privileges, or union representation, numbered more than 3 million during the 1930s. These laborers traveled from place to place, harvesting crops that needed to be picked as soon as they ripened, hoping to earn enough money to get by.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1937
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.038
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.038
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- Description
- When World War II ended, President Truman authorized joint U.S. Army-Navy nuclear weapons tests to determine the effect of atomic bombs on American warships. The Bikini Atoll was chosen to be the new nuclear proving ground for operation Crossroads because of its location away from regular air and sea routes. Mydans was sent to the island to document the exodus of the people of Bikini. The story was published by LIFE (Mar 25, 1946).
- In March 1946, to make way for nuclear testing, the Bikinians were sent 125 miles eastward across the ocean on a U.S. navy landing craft to the uninhabited, sparsely vegetated Rongerik Atoll. Although the new island was slightly larger than Bikini and had more trees, the natives soon discovered that the trees produced few fruits. Within two months of their arrival, they began to beg U.S. officials to move them back to Bikini.
- One year after being relocated, the military governor appointed an investigation board to look into the Bikinians plight. In a meeting with the people it was reported that there was insufficient food, fresh water supplies were low, and the atoll had only one brackish well. Within two years, the Bikinians were starving and had to be relocated once more.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1946
- 1946-03
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.117
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.117
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- Description
- When Carl Mydans first started working for LIFE magazine, he was asked to go to Texas and document everything from its last great cattle drive to its tough oil towns. He stopped in the town of Terlingua, a community that had sprung up around some quicksilver mines and the water sources nearby. In the early 1900s, mine workers, and those that supported the mines by farming or by cutting timber for use in the mines and smelters, began to settle in the area. Once the mercury boom ceased, the population slowly dispersed and Terlingua essentially became a ghost town.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1937
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.026
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.026
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- Description
- At dawn on August 29, 1945, the American occupation of the Japanese home islands began. Eight hours after the first troops from the 11th Airborne Division had secured the airstrip on Atsugi, the Supreme Allied Commander, General Douglas MacArthur, arrived.
- Japanese soldiers guarded the route to the city of Yokohama, the location where U.S. headquarters would be set up. Just as they had often done in the presence of the emperor, the guards turned their backs to the conquering American troops as they drove by in a gesture of utmost respect.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1945
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.078
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.078
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- Description
- When the Korean War broke out, Mydans was coming to the end of his assignment in Tokyo as TIME-LIFE bureau chief. He was in New York doing a radio program on Korea when, right before going on the air, a reporter told him that North Korea had invaded South Korea. As soon as he got the news, Mydans made a call to his supervisor at LIFE and was told to prepare to return to Asia as soon as he finished the interview.
- David Douglas Duncan was working in Japan at the time and flew to Korea. Once General MacArthur flew in from Tokyo, Duncan introduced himself explaining that he was with LIFE magazine and that he would be replacing Carl there. MacArthur replied that he was welcome there, but he was not replacing Mydans since he was already on his way back from New York.
- In an interview by Philip B. Kunhardt Jr., Mydans was asked which photographers he admired most. Among the photojournalists, Duncan was his number-one choice. The reasons are as follow: Duncan is a good photographer, a photojournalist of the first order, a storyteller, a compassionate man, a courageous man. In Carl's own words, "My years have been spent as a photojournalist, and a photojournalist is a storyteller—that is what I am, a storyteller. And David is a storyteller."
- David Douglas Duncan was a World War II Marine veteran. From July 1950 to January 1951, he covered the Korean War for LIFE magazine, focusing mainly on the Marine Corps. Most of the images can be found in his book, This Is War! A Photo-Narrative in Three Parts (1951).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1950
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.138
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.138
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- Description
- Early in 1939 Carl Mydans traveled 100 feet underground to document the building of the Midtown Tunnel in New York City, which runs under the East River all the way from 42nd Street in Manhattan to Queens. His photographs were published in LIFE magazine (April 3, 1939) and earned Mydans a Grand Prize by U.S. Camera [n.d.].
- At the moment this picture was taken, hydraulic jacks from the shield a criss-cross structure of heavy girders ringed in steel plate is pushing against the last laid iron section. As the shield pushes ahead into the river bed, the "shove" is called out. Afterwards, sections are plugged to avoid any air leaks. In good ground, the shield makes one shove every five hours; in bad ground, it can take up to twenty-four hours.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1939
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.051
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.051
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- Description
- Carl Mydans was part of Roy Stryker's photographic staff at the Resettlement Administration from late in 1935 until 1936. Between his assignments in the southeastern states to document cotton production and his travels farther north in New England, Mydans spent time in the nation's capital and photographed the Capitol from a different, less familiar point of view. During the 1930s, most neighborhoods surrounding the Capitol were poor shantytowns of tenements and shacks.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1935-09
- 1935
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.003
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.003
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- Description
- When the American occupation began in 1945, the goal was to attempt to transplant Western democracy to Japan. The Americans would occupy the country; Japan would be monitored, demilitarized, and rehabilitated. Carl Mydans, having been named TIME-LIFE bureau chief in Tokyo, had a prime viewing spot for the changes that were taking place in the Pacific.
- When the Korean War broke out nearly five years after the end of World War II, Japan's importance as a military base became clear. In this image, ancient and modern Japan stand in contrast: American jet fighter planes fly over a torii, the gateway to a Shinto shrine, as they return after a reconnaissance mission over the Pacific to an airbase on the island of Honshu.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1949
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.082
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.082
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- Description
- On August 6, 1945, a B-29 plane, the Enola Gay, dropped a uranium atomic bomb, code named "Little Boy" on Hiroshima, Japan. In minutes, half of the city vanished. According to U.S. estimates, 60,000 to 70,000 people were killed or missing; 140,000 were injured; and many more were made homeless as a result of the bomb. In the blast, thousands died instantly. Nagasaki faced the same fate three days later.
- Surveys disclosed that severe radiation injury occurred to all those exposed within a radius of one kilometer. Serious to moderate radiation injury occurred between one and two kilometers. Individuals within two to four kilometers suffered slight radiation effects. The scars on this boy's body could have been the result of flash burns during the heat waves or a residential fire caused by the blast. He is being measured as part of a continuous testing process in an attempt to understand the after-effects of radiation exposure. Mydans was the TIME-LIFE bureau chief in Tokyo at the time the picture was taken.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1949
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.129
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.129
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- Description
- The Resettlement Administration was created in an effort to curb rural poverty among farmers. It purchased small, economically unviable farms and set up government-monitored cooperative homestead communities. These farm families received educational aid along with supervision. A community called Skyline Farms was set up in the Cumberland Mountains region as one such effort of a cooperative farmstead. In this image, Mydans captures some of the children playing in the yard outside the multigrade school.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1936-06
- 1936
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.013
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.013
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- Description
- The 1960s found Carl Mydans back in the Philippines with MacArthur, as well as other locations in the Pacific. In 1968, Mydans returned to Bikini with a team of experts who were conducting tests on the now-abandoned island. While the islanders had struggled to cope with their exile, Bikini had been destroyed.
- In 1954, the Air Force and Army began preparations for a new series of testing that would include the first air-deliverable hydrogen bomb (codename: Bravo) ever detonated by the United States Operation Castle. In its aftermath, islanders and Americans alike were exposed to ash that caused illnesses symptomatic of radiation poisoning, such as skin lesions, hair loss, and the eventual development of cancer.
- Twenty-two years after Operation Crossroads was set in motion, President Lyndon B. Johnson promised the Bikini natives, by then living in Kili, that they could return to their islands. In an effort to assure the islanders that its clean-up efforts were successful, the U.S. Atomic Energy Commission issued a statement that said: "There's virtually no radiation left and we can find no discernible effect on either plant or animal life." By 1978, however, the people of Bikini were once again evacuated because of high levels of radioactive cesium and strontium in the water and in the soil.
- Though Bikini is not available for the natives to live on, it has not been abandoned. The lagoon of the Bikini Atoll, where the wrecks of over 90 American and Japanese warships lie under about 100 feet of water, has become an exclusive diving spot for tourists from the United States and Japan since 1992. After much planning and construction, Bikini Atoll opened to visitors in June 1996 to provide an economic base for a possible future resettlement of Bikini.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1968
- maker
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.161
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.161
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- Description
- This photograph was one of Carl Mydans' photo essay images for LIFE magazine titled "Antiaircraft Guns: How the U.S. Army Uses Them" (Dec 17, 1937).
- According to the magazine caption, this mobile gun was the mainstay of America's antiaircraft defense. It could fire twenty-five 12½ lb. projectiles a minute to a height of 25,000 feet, making it one of the most destructive guns in the world at the time. Its principal purpose was to ward off attacks on military objectives such as factories, railroad stations, and munitions depots.
- This photograph earned Mydans an Exhibition Award in the First International Photographic Exposition at Grand Central Palace, New York (April 1938).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1937
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.040
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.040
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- Description
- The fourth atom bomb explosion of all time occurred in July 1946 in the Pacific in an Army-Navy operation named Crossroads. It was meant to test the effect of atom bombs on naval vessels. The test site, Bikini Atoll, needed to be evacuated, and its 167 natives relocated.
- On a Sunday afternoon a few months earlier, Com. Ben Wyatt, the military governor of the Marshall Islands, traveled to Bikini. He had assembled the natives to ask if they would be willing to leave the atoll temporarily so that the United States could begin testing atomic bombs for "the good of mankind and to end all wars." The people met and voted to go to Rongerik Island, as advised by the Navy. Juda, the leader of the Bikinian people, announced that they would go "believing that everything is in the hands of God."
- Commodore Wyatt can be seen sitting on the base of a palm tree, addressing the population moments before they were set to leave their home. Mydans was sent to the island to document the exodus of the people of Bikini. The story was published by LIFE (Mar 25 1946).
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1946
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.109
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.109
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- Description
- Mydans' coverage of the Korean War put him in contact once more with Gen. Douglas MacArthur. In September 1950, U.S. Marines landed at the western port city of Inchon, near Seoul, in an attempt to move inland, retake the capital and cut off the North Korean supply lines. The amphibious operation was conceived by General MacArthur. Because of its many tactical challenges (long approaches through shallow channels, poor beaches, and a limited tidal range), it took him some time to convince the Army, Navy, and Marine Corps commanders to go through with it.
- Mydans' professional relationship with General MacArthur remained somewhat close throughout the years. Just as he had been present at the general's landing at Luzon in the Philippines, Mydans was alongside MacArthur once more during this amphibious operation in a different war. The Battle of Inchon ended a string of victories for the invading North Korean People's Army (NKPA), and introduced a counterattack by United Nations forces that led to the recapture of Seoul less than two weeks after the landing.
- In this image, Gen. Douglas MacArthur (seated center), Commander-in-Chief of the Far East Command, watches the bombardment of Inchon, Korea from the bridge of the U.S.S. Mount McKinley. Behind him, Rear Adm. James H. Doyle, U.S. Navy, Commander, Task Force 90, and Maj. Gen. Edward M. Almond (pointing towards the right), U.S. Army, X Corps Commander. Brig. Gen. Edwin K. Wright, U.S. Army, MacArthur's Operations Officer, stands to the right of Rear Admiral Doyle.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1950
- 1950-09-15
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.137
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.137
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- Description
- When the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor on December 7, 1941, Carl and Shelley Mydans were already covering the effects of World War II in the Pacific. Early in 1941 they went to Pearl Harbor, in Hawaii, and China, and later to Manila, in the Philippines.
- Clark Air Base, a U.S. Air Force base on Luzon Island, was overrun by Japanese forces in early 1942. On the first day of war in the Pacific, the Japanese managed to destroy the American planes on the field. Some pilots escaped to fly again; some fought and died as infantry soldiers on Bataan and Corregidor; and others died in Japanese prison camps. This group portrait of pilots was taken just a day after the Japanese had destroyed their grounded planes. In January 1945, after three months of fierce fighting, American forces reclaimed the air base.
- Location
- Currently not on view
- Date made
- 1941-12
- 1941
- photographer
- Mydans, Carl
- ID Number
- 2005.0228.063
- accession number
- 2005.0228
- catalog number
- 2005.0228.063
