Victory

On February 23, 1945, the fifth day of the battle for Iwo Jima, six Marines raised a second, larger flag on top of Mount Suribachi, the 554-foot volcano at the southern tip of the island. A smaller flag had gone up that morning; this one went up in the early afternoon. Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal caught it, and the picture won the 1945 Pulitzer Prize for Photography.

The battle lasted until March 26. More than 26,000 Americans were killed or wounded, including some 6,800 dead, and of roughly 21,000 Japanese defenders only a few hundred were taken prisoner during the fighting.

Who stands in the photograph has been revised since. The Marine Corps announced corrections to two of the six men, in 2016 and again in 2019, after reviewing the images. The flag raisers are remembered as a group, which is how the Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, dedicated in 1954, shows them.

This version is built from slashing strokes of orange, teal and blue: a knot of helmeted figures at the base of a slanting pole, shoulders braced, hands reaching up, the flag snapping across the top of the frame. The ground beneath them burns red and orange, and the sky behind is a wash of gold.