Ralph Theodore Morse (October 23, 1917 – December 7, 2014) was a career staff photographer for Life magazine. He photographed some of the most widely seen pictures of World War II, the United States space program, and sports events, and was celebrated for his multiple-exposure photographs. Morse's success as an improviser led to his being considered Life magazine's specialist in technical photography. FOTOfusion 2008: Palm Beach Photographic Center/Instructor Biographies. Retrieved May 28, 2008. Former managing editor George P. Hunt declared that "If [the] equipment he needed didn't exist, [Morse] built it.""The Camera of an Inventive Genius", Masterpiece Online: The World of Art at Your Fingertips, Retrieved December 7, 2009.
During his thirty years at Life, Morse covered assignments including science, theater, fads and 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.Gallery M, Ralph Morse, May 2006. Retrieved February 11, 2008.
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.Cunningham, Grant. "Morse Code" , Revolver Liberation Alliance, November 6, 2009. Retrieved December 5, 2009. 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."EXCLUSIVE: Up Close With Apollo 11" , LIFE.com, July 15, 2009. Retrieved July 15, 2009.
Morse believed 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, described 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," said McNitt.Small, Bill."The Accidental Surrealist" . Retrieved October 24, 2009. Former Life managing editor George P. Hunt proclaimed of Morse, "If Life could afford only one photographer, it would have to be Ralph Morse."The Editors of Life, John Loengard, and Gordon Parks (2004). The Great LIFE Photographers, p. 382. Bulfinch Press, NY. .
Early life Ralph Morse had humble roots. Born in Manhattan and raised in the Bronx 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 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 Life photographer Robert Capa.Serrano Esparza, José Manuel. "John G. Morris: An Interview with the Most Influential and Experienced Photo Editor in History", elrectanguloenlamano, September 12, 2009. Retrieved December 11, 2009. 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 darkroom 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 every day 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, a 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.Chandler, Mary Voelz. "Gallery M: Fine Art, Gallery, Sculpture", December 13, 2002. Retrieved on December 5, 2009. 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.
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 Guadalcanal, Morse's cameras recorded America's first amphibious attack in the Pacific. He arranged for the captain of the , 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.Frank, Richard B. Guadalcanal, p. 306–307. Morse's film and equipment went down with the ship while he trod 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."American mutilation of Japanese war dead". Retrieved on December 21, 2009. 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 reassigned 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."Whatever Happened to ‘George Lott, Casualty'? Life Magazine's Randomly Chosen Wounded Soldier" Wild Bill Guarnere. Community, November 11, 2009. Morse was witness to the invasion at Normandy,Morris, John G. "The Magnificent Eleven: The D-Day Photographs of Robert Capa" , 1998. air raids in Verdun, General Charles de Gaulle's peace parade in Paris, and Hermann Göring'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.
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