Charles Fenno Jacobs - Photographs.

Charles Fenno Jacobs (1904–1974) was an American photographer and photojournalist born in Waltham, Massachusetts, on 14 December 1904. Before establishing himself as a professional photographer, Jacobs spent several years in the Merchant Marine, an experience that took him outside the United States and introduced him to international travel. After leaving the Merchant Marine he settled in New York and initially found photographic work for a commercial real estate company while developing his own documentary photography with a 35mm camera. During the 1930s his career moved increasingly towards magazine photography and photojournalism. By 1941 he had worked for major publications including Life, Fortune and U.S. Camera, as well as undertaking a brief period of work for the Farm Security Administration. His assignments included work in the United States, Mexico and South America, establishing him as an experienced editorial photographer before American entry into the Second World War.

Following the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbour on 7 December 1941, Edward Steichen recruited Jacobs into the United States Navy's Naval Aviation Photographic Unit, which was established in 1942 to document and publicise naval aviation. Jacobs served as a naval officer and by August 1943 was recorded as Lieutenant Commander Charles Fenno Jacobs. Steichen instructed his photographers to concentrate upon the people involved in the war rather than producing only conventional photographs of ships, aircraft and military equipment. Jacobs applied this approach to assignments covering aircraft manufacture, naval training, shipbuilding and life aboard operational vessels. In California he photographed aircraft production and women employed in wartime factories. At the Electric Boat Company in Groton, Connecticut, in August 1943, he documented workers constructing submarine hulls. He also photographed aviation cadets and naval personnel during training and periods of leave. His photographs combined the requirements of official Navy documentation with the observational methods he had developed through magazine photography.

One of Jacobs's most substantial wartime assignments was his documentation of life aboard the battleship USS New Jersey, where he photographed sailors performing their duties as well as eating, resting, washing, socialising and occupying the confined spaces of a major warship. His wartime photographs also included Japanese prisoners, naval pilots, industrial workers and personnel engaged in the extensive support operations required by the United States Navy. After the war ended in 1945, Jacobs returned to magazine photography. Together with fellow naval photographers Horace Bristol and Victor Jorgensen, he approached Fortune with a proposal that the photographers should be assigned to different regions of the world. Fortune accepted the proposal and Jacobs was assigned to Europe, where he photographed the continent during the immediate post war period. His subsequent work continued to involve international travel, editorial photography and documentary assignments, and examples of his photography appeared in exhibitions at the Museum of Modern Art, including The Exact Instant in 1949, Colour Photography in 1950 and Edward Steichen's The Family of Man in 1955. Jacobs continued working in photography and publishing into the later decades of his life and died in Englewood, New Jersey, on 27 June 1974.

Charles Fenno Jacobs

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Dreams Heal - Elm Lake

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Photographs by C. F. Jacobs featured in this video are drawn from United States Government collections, including the Library of Congress and United States National Archives. FSA, OWI and official United States Navy photographs created as part of Jacobs's government work are in the public domain in the United States. Individual catalogue records should be checked for specific credit information.

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