12 Facts About Carl Mydans

Carl Mydans was an American photographer who worked for the Farm Security Administration and Life magazine.

Carl Mydans became devoted to photography while in college at Boston University.

Carl Mydans's first reporting jobs were for The Boston Globe and the Boston Herald.

Carl Mydans recorded photographic images of life and death throughout Europe and Asia during World War II travelling over 45,000 miles.

In 1941, the photographer and Shelley Carl Mydans were the first husband and wife team on the magazine's staff.

Shelley and Carl Mydans were captured by the invading Japanese forces in the Philippines and interned for nearly a year at the Santo Tomas Internment Camp in Manila, then for another year in Shanghai, China, before they were released as part of a prisoner-of-war exchange in December 1943.

Carl Mydans snapped the moment when General Douglas MacArthur purposefully strode ashore in the Philippines in 1945, The legendary officer had declared, when the Japanese came in 1942, "I shall return," and Carl Mydans' photograph of the formidable general immortalized that claim for posterity.

Some asserted that it must have been staged, but Carl Mydans resolutely defended the photograph as entirely spontaneous, though he did admit that MacArthur was savvy about public-relations opportunities.

Carl Mydans captured the signing of Japan's surrender aboard the USS.

Time-Life was the publisher of Time, Life and other top magazines, which Carl Mydans continued to provide with an array of visual stories.

Carl Mydans died on August 16,2004, of heart failure at his home in Larchmont, New York, at the age of 97.

Widowed in 2002, Carl Mydans was survived by his daughter, Misty, a California attorney; and his son, Seth, Asia correspondent for The New York Times.