Update on Photog Who Took Credit for Famous Images

By: Greg Mitchell There is a fascinating update to the controversy surrounding well-known photographer Joe O?Donnell, which E&P covered closely one year ago.

When O?Donnell died last August at the age of 85, detailed obituaries appeared in The Washington Post (via the Associated Press), The New York Times (by staffer Douglas Martin), and other major papers, along with a lengthy account in his hometown Tennessean in Nashville. The Times noted that he ?captured lastingly famous scenes as a longtime White House photographer.? I had interviewed O?Donnell briefly for a book about 15 years ago, and E&P, after he passed away, published my column focusing on his photographs from Hiroshima and Nagasaki shortly after the atomic bombings in 1945.

But quickly, some photographers, and a major article at the Web site www.DigitalJournalist.org, disputed some of the facts in the obits and declared that O?Donnell claimed some well known images captured by other photographers as his own.

The New York Times soon carried a correction.

When O?Donnell died, the Times cited well-known images he took credit for, including President Truman and General MacArthur at Wake Island and Vice President Nixon in his ?kitchen debate? with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. But it was the following that eventually sparked the blowback: ?And the O?Donnell photograph of John F. Kennedy Jr., saluting his father?s coffin became the most reproduced version of that memorable scene.?

Why was O?Donnell not closely IDed with many of his most widely-published photos? The Times explained: ?Because he was on the government payroll, Mr. O?Donnell got no personal credit for those photos.?

The day after the obit appeared, according to The Digital Journalist, Gary Haynes, a retired UPI photographer notified the Times that he was ?99% certain? that the John-John salute photo claimed by O?Donnell was actually taken by UPI?s Stan Stearns.

Stearns told Fulton that he was sure that O?Donnell had robbed his credit but then went further: ?This guy was never, ever a White House photographer,? although he did not cite evidence for this. Joe Chapman, a retired UPI editor and manager, said he did an ?overlay? which suggested that the photo had to be Stearns? and not one taken by someone else standing in the same location. Haynes and Chapman also wrote letters to me.

But that wasn?t the end of it. Photographers on the UPI Download list looked at other photos O?Donnell had sold on his Web site, and did more overlays that found that some of O?Donnell?s photos were ?identical? to ones taken by Mark Shaw, Elliott Erwitt and others. An O?Donnell portrait of Truman seemed the same as one credited to Frank Gatteri at the Truman Library site.

The Times correction observed: "Two pictures on Aug. 14 with an obituary about the news photographer Joe O'Donnell carried erroneous credits, and the obituary also included one of the incorrect credits. The photograph of a saluting John F. Kennedy Jr. during the funeral for his father in 1963 was taken by Stan Stearns for United Press International, not by Mr. O'Donnell. The photographer who took the second picture, showing Stalin, Roosevelt and Churchill during a wartime meeting in Tehran in 1943, is not known, although Mr. O'Donnell claimed credit for it and the Kennedy picture. Mr. O'Donnell is not known to have been in Tehran at the time. A Nashville gallery that handled Mr. O'Donnell's work supplied the incorrect information. The Times is researching other claims by Mr. O'Donnell reported in the obituary."

Fulton closed by saying that ?many people? are now researching presidential diaries and travel logs as well as O?Donnell?s assertions that he took any photos in Hiroshima and Nagasaki: ?Some of these can be identified as taken by other photographers and others are dubious.?

Faced with these probings, O?Donnell?s son, Tyge O'Donnell, admitted to E&P that it appeared that ?some of those photos in question" are indeed not his father's work. But he took exception to claims that his father was not a White House photographer, and provided much evidence in this regard. He said that his father was never the official photographer who worked out of the White House but rather was employed by the United States Information Agency to document presidential travels, events and visiting dignitaries.

He explained: ?Back in the mid-1990s, Dad made a trip to the National Archives and found what he thought were some of his unaccredited photos. It is true that any photos taken by my father and his coworkers were simply credited to the USIA. I think it was during this visit he picked up some of the photos in question. He would have been in his 70s then and the onset of his dementia was starting to take hold.?

He added: ?I just want to clarify my father was not leading the life of Walter Mitty."

Tyge also offered a good deal of personal testimony to the fact that his father did take pictures in Hiroshima and Nagasaki (?we have the negatives?). But in the aftermath, many of the photographers who had already spoken out raised questions about all of O?Donnell?s work.

That?s the way the story remained, for me and others in the U.S. media, until this week, when Tyge O?Donnell sent me a surprising update. It seems that after his father died, and despite the controversy that followed, "his atomic bomb photographs became more popular then ever in Japan. At the end of the year, the 70-year-old Japanese princess said what moved her the most over the past year was my dad's photo of the brothers (one being dead) at the cremation site. Her comment got the attention of a producer for NHK Television. NHK is Japan's dominant TV station.

?Long story short, NHK visited with me and my stepmother at the first of the year. They returned in May to start filming a documentary about my father. I spent 5 days with them here in Las Vegas and we toured and interviewed the staff and tourists at the local Atomic Testing Museum?.I also traveled with the NHK crew to Washington DC where we found 140 more of my father's photographs of Japan in the National Archives (and YES, we're positive there his!) After Washington, I traveled with NHK to Nashville for more interviews about my dad with family and his friends.

?Finally, as the finale of the film project, I flew to Nagasaki earlier this month to attend the ceremony commemorating the donation of 46 of my dad's photographs to the Nagasaki Atomic Bomb Museum?.

"NHK's documentary is airing in Japan on August 7th. 11 million viewers (one out of ten Japanese) are estimated to
watch it?. If you have satellite TV and receive the TV JAPAN channel, the documentary is showing this Friday at 7pm, PST.?

For more, visit Tyge O?Donnell?s web site at:

http://www.myspace.com/thephoenixventure