Assignment #5 Part II

My experience finding pictures for this assignment was relatively easy. I knew I wanted to focus on World War II because of the ample number of pictures surrounding it. However, I was unsure of what in particular to focus on. The scope of the war was so large that efficiently summarizing it in just 5 pictures would be difficult. I tried this at first, finding a picture of Hitler at Nuremburg, the "Big Three" at Yalta, the Russians hanging a Red Banner over the Reichstag, and the atomic explosion that destroyed Hiroshima. But the picture essay felt very broad and disconnected. Then I decided to try and focus in on a single event and get a more complete feel for the events of the day.

I started with the well-known first photography from D-Day, and branched off from there, picking images from the US Naval archive which I thought were the most visually appealing. I hope that I succeeded in creating a compelling visual narrative (art was never my specialty). Ironically my greatest frustrations were not with actually locating the pictures themselves, but uploading them to Blogger, which uses an image cropping system which is seemingly designed for the computer illiterate. I first uploaded my 5 files to imageshack and attempted to link to them via HTML but Blogger cut them in half, apparently because the formatting of the template allows for only small columns. If you want higher res of the pictures provided, you have to click on them. This is a thoroughly annoying system and I think it is a good reason to pick some other free blog service, like LiveJournal, over this one.

Assignment #5 Part I

Troops in a landing craft approaching "Omaha" Beach on "D-Day", 6 June 1944.

Photograph from the Army Signal Corps Collection in the U.S. National Archives.
Source: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/images/s300000/s320901c.htm







Army troops wade ashore on "Omaha" Beach during the "D-Day" landings, 6 June 1944.
They were brought to the beach by a Coast Guard manned LCVP.

Photograph from the U.S. Coast Guard Collection in the U.S. National Archives.
Source: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm





Landing ships putting cargo ashore on one of the invasion beaches, at low tide during the first days of the operation, June 1944.

Photograph from the U.S. Coast Guard Collection in the U.S. National Archives.
Source: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm





Coast Guard manned USS LST-21 unloads British Army tanks and trucks onto a "Rhino" barge during the early hours of the invasion, 6 June 1944.

Photograph from the U.S. Coast Guard Collection in the U.S. National Archives.
Source: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm

USS LST-325 (left) and USS LST-388 unloading while stranded at low tide during resupply operations, 12 June 1944.

Official U.S. Navy Photograph, now in the collections of the National Archives.
Source: http://www.history.navy.mil/photos/events/wwii-eur/normandy/normandy.htm