A Life Photographer
Ralph Morse
Life Magazine
Ralph Morse cannot remember when he did not want to be a photographer. He devoured all photography courses offered at City College in New York, and found his first job as a photographer’s assistant by calling the list of photographers in the classified section of the telephone directory;
By 1938, when he was 21, he was working on assignments for Life Magazine. He joined the photographic staff in 1942. As a combat photographer, Morse covered the initial landing on Guadalcanal and General Doolittle’s Tokyo Raid. He was aboard the heavy cruiser Vincennes when it was sunk during the battle of Savo Island, and he floated for six and a half hours until help arrived.
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Morse covered the D-Day landings on the Normandy beaches and liberation of Paris, and was the only American Press photographer at the German surrender at Rheims.
A great technical experimenter, Ralph Morse claims to specialize in nothing – "only pictures". He has been a successfull improvisor and master of multiple exposures. Said former Life managing editor George Hunt : “ If equipment he needed didn't exist, he built it ”.
Morse began covering the space program in 1958. By 1962, his technical expertise was so well known around Cape Canaveral that he was one of the first two journalists allowed in a capsule for a 12-hour simulated moon flight. With the cooperation of NASA, he mounted cameras on rockets tails, gantries, umbilical towers and splash shields.Some of his cameras have had unplanned launchings, others have been smashed or incinerated, but he maintains that the potential shots were worth the risk.
For his coverage of the various astronaut programs, Morse made it his business to get to know well all the pilots, their lives and their children. He fished, sailed and waterskied with his subjects and developed a genuine closeness to them. He all but became a member of this select groups of pilots, and their jokes about his persistence and his enthusiasm were expressions of their real admiration for him.
If you ask fast-talking, alert and energetic Morse which assignment he has found most interesting, he says, “ I guess you might say I get most excited about whatever job I'm working on ”.
