Victor Jorgensen is a former Navy photo journalist who probably is most famous for taking a photograph of an impromptu scene in Manhattan on August 14, 1945, but from a different angle and in a less dramatic exposure than that of a photograph taken by Alfred Eisenstaedt. Both photographs were of the same V-J Day embrace of a nurse by a sailor. Eisenstaedt's better known photograph, V–J day in Times Square was published in Life.
On the day after the images were taken by the two photographers, the one taken by Jorgensen was published in the New York Times.[1] His photograph, which was taken while he was on duty, is retained in the national archives. A copy of it is displayed to the right.
Jorgensen was one of the initial six photographers recruited by Cmdr Edward Steichen for his Naval Aviation Photographic Unit in 1942.[2]
Jorgensen toured around the world during World War II taking photographs for the military. While aboard the USS Monterey (CVL-26) he captured Navy pilots in the forward elevator well of the ship playing basketball during June 1944. That photograph is displayed below and one of the subjects, the jumper of the left, is Gerald Ford, who later became the president of the United States upon the resignation of Richard Nixon.[3][4]