The Photograph And What It Cannot Contain

Joe Rosenthal’s photograph is a great photograph.

It is compositionally brilliant — the diagonal line of the flagpole against the sky, the upward reach of the figures, the sense of collective effort and upward momentum — and it captures a genuine moment rather than a staged one.

Rosenthal did not direct the men.

He found his angle and pressed the shutter at the right moment.

The image is real in that fundamental sense.