The Photojournalist

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The photographer Max Desfor covered many of the most significant events and personalities of the 20th century while working for the Associated Press.

Beginning in the 1930s, Desfor traveled the world, photographing daily life, unrest, celebrities, warfare, and more. Much of his reporting took place in Asia, where he documented events in the Pacific during World War II. He was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1951 for his extensive and powerful coverage of the Korean War.

Collected here, in rough chronological order, are a few of Max Desfor’s images from 1938 to 1983.

A curious crowd of thousands of onlookers nervously watch John Ward as he perched himself on a ledge on the 17th floor of the Gotham Hotel on Fifth Avenue in New York, threatening to jump, on July 26, 1938.

President Franklin D. Roosevelt and Josephus Daniels, ambassador to Mexico, as they arrived at a 4-H Club encampment in Washington on June 14, 1940.

Corporal Louis Peter Kontas of Malden, Massachusetts, sounds taps at a Marine cemetery on Okinawa, Japan, on July 23, 1945, where are buried Marines who died in the assault on the island.

Members of the 382nd Regiment, 96th Division on Okinawa, indulge in a little horseplay with some Japanese souvenirs on August 1, 1945.

The B-29 superfortress Enola Gay lands at its Tinian base after its historic bombing mission over Hiroshima, Japan, where it dropped the world’s first atomic bomb used as a weapon on August 6, 1945.

Max Desfor was on hand to capture the scene aboard the battleship Missouri as the Japanese surrender documents were signed in Tokyo Bay on September 2, 1945, ending World War II.

Aerial view of Hiroshima on September 5, 1945, after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6.

Returning to their home in Tokyo on October 11, 1945, after having evacuated during American air-raids on the Japanese capital.

Bespectacled Mahatma Gandhi laughs with Jawaharlal Nehru, at the All-India Congress committee meeting in Bombay, India, on July 6, 1946.

After the assassination of Mahatma Gandhi, police, the military, and volunteer guards attempt to beat back the crowds as they surge forward towards the funeral pyre in New Delhi on January 31, 1948.

Nomad camp at base in Karkacha Hills, Afghanistan, on October 8, 1949.

Actor Orson Welles is seen at right standing on The Giants' Stairway, on the set of the film Othello, under a statue of Neptune, in Venice, Italy, on November 8, 1949.

Princess Elizabeth and her husband, Philip, Duke of Edinburgh, in the grounds of the Villa Guardamangia, Malta, on November 23, 1949.

British gun carriers, pass a knocked-out Russian T-34 tank on a demolished bridge at Osan, South of Suwon, South Korea, on January 6, 1950.

U.S. Marines cover a wounded North Korean soldier as he hoists himself onto stretcher in the Naktong River sector of the Korean front on August 23, 1950.

U.S. Marines crouch behind a railing in Seoul on September 27, 1950, as they answer fire from some North Korean snipers left behind to try and hamper the American advance into the South Korean capital.

Rubble litters streets and smoke from burning buildings fills sky as tanks lead UN forces in the recapture of Seoul on September 28, 1950.

Fatigue, not an enemy bullet, stopped this American marine who catches 40 winks on a Seoul Street unperturbed by his audience of young and old residents in Seoul on September 28, 1950.

Paratroopers drop from U.S. Air Force C-119 transport planes during an operation over an undisclosed location in Korea, in October of 1950.

Paratroopers of the United Nations forces jump from aircraft near the North Korean towns of Sukchon and Sunchon, about October 20, 1950.

In this December 4, 1950 photo, residents from Pyongyang, North Korea, and refugees from other areas crawl perilously over shattered girders of the city's bridge, as they flee south across the Taedong River to escape the advance of Chinese Communist troops.

A Marine sounds taps for his buddies on December 17, 1950 who died in the retreat of United Nations forces from the Changjin Reservoir area and now lie in fresh graves in a military cemetery at Hungnam.

A trainload of refugees halts at a crossing near Osan, South Korea on January 15, 1951, as a British tank carrying military personnel gets right of way.

A pair of bound hands and a breathing hole in the snow at Yangji, Korea, on January 27, 1951, reveal the presence of the body of a Korean civilian shot and left to die by retreating Communists during the Korean War.

Harold Mayes, (standing) sports editor for Empire News, chats with Sugar Ray Robinson, boxer, at a training camp at Pompton Lakes, New Jersey, on August 31, 1951.

Desfor revists Hiroshima in 1970, 25 years after the atomic bomb was dropped on August 6, 1945.

Former U.S. President Richard Nixon visits Canton Park in Canton, China, on February 28, 1976.

Members of the family of Nationalist Chinese leader Chiang Kai-Shek stand beside his coffin during his funeral in Taipei, Taiwan, on April 16, 1975.

Retired Associated Press photographer Max Desfor stands next to his photograph of Japan's formal surrender on the deck of the USS Missouri in Washington, D.C., on May 24, 2004.