Monday, February 12, 2007

Black History Month, Martin Luther King, LBJ

Martin Luther King and LBJ. Public Domain ClipArt Stock Photos and Images. Description: Martin Luther King, Jr. at the White House with Lyndon Johnson, March 18, 1966. By Yoichi Okamoto. Keywords: civil rights, Credit: Lyndon Baines Johnson Library. High Resolution Image

White House Photo by Yoichi Okamoto is Public Domain. Generally speaking, works created by U.S. Government employees are not eligible for copyright protection in the United States. See Circular 1 "COPYRIGHT BASICS" PDF. from the U.S. Copyright Office.

About the photographer: Yoichi Okamoto (1915–1985) Born in Yonkers, New York, Yoichi Okamoto was educated at Colgate University. After serving as a still-and motion-picture photographer in the U.S. Army in World War II, he headed the Army's Signal Corps's photo office in occupied Austria and then worked briefly as a photographer for a newspaper in Syracuse, New York. Mr. Okamoto then joined the United States Information Agency (USIA) serving as staff photographer in USIA posts in Germany and Austria, and eventually as chief of the Visual Materials Branch in Washington, DC.

Martin Luther King, Jr. at the White House with Lyndon Johnson

Two of his photographs were chosen for the landmark 1955 Museum of Modern Art's photography exhibition "The Family of Man." In 1961, Mr. Okamoto accompanied Vice President Lyndon Johnson on an official visit to West Berlin. Mr. Johnson was so impressed with Mr. Okamoto's work that he was asked to join the Vice President on several other trips. When Mr. Johnson became President, he appointed Mr. Okamoto White House photographer. After President Johnson left office in 1969, Mr. Okamoto founded a custom photo studio in Washington, DC.

Yoichi Okamoto's photography reveals a gift for capturing his subject's personality. This is especially true of his work as White House photographer, where he gained unprecedented access to Lyndon Johnson. Mr. Okamoto was able to anticipate the President's changeable moods, and his candid images tell us much about LBJ's personal political style. His goal, he told President Johnson, was not just to take portraits, but "to hang around and try to document history in the making." In his other government work, Mr. Okamoto demonstrated a strong appreciation for setting and context. His images of Washington, DC, and Munich, Germany, for example, show us the joys and irritations of urban life.

Yoichi Okamoto's photography is well represented in the holdings of the National Archives. In addition to his White House photographs that are preserved at the Lyndon Baines Johnson Library in Austin, Texas, his work as a USIA staff member, as well as some of his later freelance photographs, are among USIA photographic files at the National Archives at College Park. In 1973, Mr. Okamoto completed several assignments for the Environmental Protection Agency's DOCUMERICA project. These photographs and some of his letters are also found in THE NATIONAL ARCHIVES.

Leave a comment, make a request, Let this small sampling be a guide to better quality, more plentiful, public domain, royalty free, copyright free, high resolution, images, stock photos, jpeg, jpg, free for commercial use, clip art, clipart, clip-art.

No comments:

Post a Comment