24 June 1942 press photo of Churchill watching parachute troops at Fort Jackson For Sale

An original wartime press photograph of Prime Minister Winston S. Churchill watching American parachute troops at Fort Jackson, South Carolina on 24 June 1942

Condition: Very Good

This original press photo captures Winston S. Churchill at Fort Jackson, South Carolina on 24 June 1942 watching a parachute demonstration by US troops. The gelatin silver print on matte photo paper measures 6 x 8 inches (15.2 x 20.3 cm). Condition is very good. The paper is crisp and clean with only minor edge wear.

This press photo was once a part of the working archives ofThe Daily Telegraphand features their Art Department’s original hand-applied retouching to Churchill’s hands and clothes and airbrushing to the background, as well as original crop marks. The verso bears a copyright stamp of “The Associated Press”, a published stamp ofThe Daily Telegraphdated 7 JUL 1942, and a handwritten caption reading, “Mr. Churchill watching the descent of United States parachute troops during his recent American visit. Two troop-carrying planes are seen flying away to the right of the picture.”

On 17 June 1942 Churchill left London for the United States for his second US meeting with President Roosevelt since the United States had entered the war the previous December. During his trip Churchill visited Fort Jackson, South Carolina, home base for 60,000 American troops, several thousand of which took part in a presentation for the Prime Minister on 24 June. Churchill was treated to a display of parachuting troops, of which he would later recall, “I had never seen a thousand men leap into the air at once”. After lunch a brigade of young soldiers demonstrated a field firing exercise with live ammunition. Churchill later wrote a letter of thanks to his American hosts: “I have had considerable experience of such inspections and I can say that I have never been more impressed than I was with the bearing of the men whom I saw. The undemonstrative, therefore grim, determination which was everywhere manifest not only in the seasoned troops but in the newly-drafted, bodes ill for our enemies.” (Gilbert, Vol VII, p.133)

During the first half of the twentieth century, photojournalism grew as a practice, fundamentally changing the way the public interacted with current events.Newspapers assembled expansive archives, physical copies of all photographs published or deemed useful for potential future use, their versos typically marked with ink stamps and notes providing provenance and captions. Photo departments would often take brush, paint, pencil, and marker to the surface of photographs themselves to edit them before publication. Today these photographs exist as repositories of historical memory, technological artifacts, and often striking pieces of vernacular art.

Ref #: 005216
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