In March 1945, Toni Frissell took more than 280 photographs of the "Tuskegee Airmen," including this image of two fighter pilots. The elite, all-African American 332nd Fighter Group was stationed at Ramitelli, Italy and commanded by Col. Benjamin O. Davis Jr, who later became the first three-star general in the Air Corps. The 332nd earned more than 744 Air Medals and Clusters, more than 100 Flying Crosses, 14 Bronze Stars, eight Purple Hearts, a Silver Star and a Legion of Merit. Frissell was the first professional photographer permitted to capture the Tuskegee Airmen in a combat situation. She traveled to their air base in southern Italy, from where the "Tuskegee Airmen" flew sorties into southern Europe and north Africa.

Remembered today principally for her high-fashion photography for Vogue and Harper's Bazaar, Toni Frissell (1907-1988) volunteered her photographic services to the American Red Cross, Women's Army Corps, and Eighth Army Air Force during WWII. On their behalf, she produced thousands of images of nurses, front-line soldiers, WACs, African-American airmen, and orphaned children.

Frissell's leap from fashion photography into war reportage echoed the desires of earlier generations of newswomen to move from "soft news" of fashion and society pages into the "hard news" of the front page. On volunteering for the American Red Cross in 1941, Frissell said: "I became so frustrated with fashions that I wanted to prove to myself that I could do a real reporting job." Using her connections with high-profile society matrons, Frissell aggressively pursued wartime assignments at home and abroad, often over her family's objections.

Frissell's work usually involved creating images to support the publicity objectives of her subjects. Her photographs of WACs in training and under review by President Franklin Roosevelt fit into a media campaign devised to counter negative public perception of women in uniform. Likewise, Frissell's images of the African American fighter pilots of the elite 332nd Fighter Group were intended to encourage positive public attitudes about the fitness of blacks to handle demanding military jobs.

She is noted for taking fashion photography out of the studio into the outdoors, thus placing an accent on the active woman. She is also known for the imaginative angles, both physical and metaphorical, from which she covered her subjects.

Toni Frissell donated her entire life's work to the Library of Congress. The Toni Frissell Collection consists of 340,000 items covering 1930-69.

Medium :The original is a photographic print : gelatin silver

Created/Published :March, 1945

Creator : Toni Frissell, photographer, 1907 - 1988

Part of the Toni Frissell Collection housed in the Prints and Photographs Division of the Library of Congress

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Product #: ppmsca13248