Just A Beautiful Picture

Photography by W. Eugene Smith (1918-1978)

This picture somehow reminds me of a western movie I once saw, cannot remember which. The picture is said to be taken during WWII and show a soldier washing up after coming home.

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As proof that this blog is heterophilic I am now posting the iconic picture that is mentioned by my dear friend Diana in her comment on my earlier post "Just Because It´s Cute".

Hey, most of my family and best friends are heterosexually challenged, actually even my mother and father. I usually make sure to have at least three of the poor things at every party I throw.

I found this background story to the picture on the blog A History of Total Health.

"Edith (Shain) was a part-time nurse and student at New York University on the day President Harry Truman announced the Japanese had surrendered. She and a friend, at work in Manhattan at Doctors Hospital, took the subway to Times Square when they heard the news. Still wearing her nursing whites, Shain joined the crowd in expressing their impossible-to-describe exhilaration that the horrors of world war were over.

Amid the pandemonium, Edith was suddenly grabbed, embraced and passionately kissed by the unknown sailor who’d forgotten his manners in the heat of the moment. Alert photojournalist Alfred Eisenstaedt and naval photographer Lt. Victor Jorgenson seized the opportunity for the image of a lifetime. Jorgenson’s version was published the next day in the New York Times; Eisenstaedt’s shot appeared on Life magazine’s cover."

But it seems there are three women claiming to be the nurse in the picture as this article in the New York Times tells us, "When A Kiss Isn´t Just A Kiss".