American photographer (1922?2019)
Ed Westcott
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Westcott in 2004
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Born
| James Edward Westcott
(
1922-01-20
)
January 20, 1922
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Died
| March 29, 2019
(2019-03-29)
(aged 97)
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Nationality
| American
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Occupation
| Photographer
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Known for
| Manhattan Project
photography
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James Edward Westcott
(January 20, 1922 ? March 29, 2019) was an American photographer who was noted for his work with the United States government in
Oak Ridge
,
Tennessee
, during the
Manhattan Project
and the
Cold War
.
As one of the few people permitted to have a camera in the Oak Ridge area during the Manhattan Project, he created the main visual record of the construction and operation of the Oak Ridge production facilities and of civilian life in the enclosed community of Oak Ridge.
[1]
Early life and career
[
edit
]
Ed Westcott was born on January 20, 1922, in
Chattanooga
, Tennessee, the son of Jamie and Lucille Westcott, and moved to
Nashville
with his family as a child.
[2]
After Ed expressed an interest in photography, his father saved for a year to buy him a
Foth Derby
camera that cost $25. The gift of that camera in the
Depression
year of 1934 started young Ed on the path to his future career. During his teenage years, he got into the business of
developing film
for friends and neighbors and worked in several Nashville
portrait
studios.
[3]
In 1941, he joined the
U.S. Army Corps of Engineers
,
[4]
as a photographer in the Corps' Nashville District. His job for the Corps sent him around the region to create photographic documentation of several
dams
, a site in Tennessee that later became a prisoner-of-war camp, and the airport and other facilities at
Fort Campbell
on the Tennessee?
Kentucky
border.
[2]
[5]
[6]
Photographer for the Manhattan Project and its aftermath
[
edit
]
In December 1942, the Army Corps transferred the 20-year-old Westcott to the
Clinton Engineer Works
at the then-secret Oak Ridge site.
[5]
He later recalled that:
By November 1942, work was nearing completion on army camps, air bases, dams and enemy internment camps in seven southern states where I photographed many areas for site selection and construction progress reports for the US Corps of Engineers. I was one of the last of the 10 cameramen to leave the Nashville District office of the Corps of Engineers and the only one to accept a transfer with the engineers. Having a choice of a project in Alaska or a new job starting near Knoxville that would take a predicted five years to complete, I selected Knoxville.
[7]
Westcott was the 29th employee hired for the
Manhattan Project
in Oak Ridge,
[3]
[8]
where he was to work as an official government photographer from 1942 to 1966. During much of
World War II
he was employed by the Roane-Anderson Company, under contract to the Army Corps. As well as photographing the construction and mechanical workings of the
X-10
,
K-25
,
Y-12
, and
S-50
production facilities, he photographed civilian activities in Oak Ridge for the community's Army-sponsored weekly newspaper, the
Oak Ridge Journal
. All of Westcott's wartime photos were produced with either a
Speed Graphic
or an 8×10
Deardorff
view camera
.
[9]
Some of his images were among the photos that were distributed to news media with the announcement of the first
atomic bomb
and the secret project that created it.
[1]
[10]
In the weeks before the
bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
in August 1945, prints of 18 of his photographs were made in secrecy in preparation for the announcement. The photographs were declassified and distributed as part of the press kit. He also processed film taken by the damage assessment teams in his laboratory in Oak Ridge.
[2]
It took three days to print them; armed guards protected the darkroom.
[11]
In June 1945, Westcott became an Army employee again, and in the post-war years he transitioned to employment with the
U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
(AEC) after its formation in 1946.
[1]
In 1966 he was assigned to the AEC headquarters near
Washington, D.C.
, in
Germantown, Maryland
, where he worked for the AEC and its successor agencies (the
Energy Research and Development Administration
and
Department of Energy
) until retiring in 1977. He photographed nuclear power stations all over the United States.
[2]
[10]
During Westcott's 35-year professional career, his assignments included creating photographic documentation of many notable people, including Manhattan Project scientists
J. Robert Oppenheimer
,
Arthur Compton
,
Glenn Seaborg
,
Vannevar Bush
,
Ernest O. Lawrence
, and
James Bryant Conant
, U.S. Army Generals
Leslie Groves
,
Maxwell Taylor
and
Kenneth Nichols
, Admiral
Hyman Rickover
,
Secretary of War
Robert P. Patterson
, U.S. Senators
Estes Kefauver
and
Kenneth McKellar
of Tennessee and
Robert A. Taft
of Ohio,
Tennessee Valley Authority
director and AEC chairman
David Lilienthal
, and seven or eight
U.S. Presidents
.
[1]
[10]
[12]
Westcott's February 1946 photo portrait of Oppenheimer is highly regarded for depicting the Manhattan Project scientific director as a man weary from the tremendous weight of his experience. When he met with Oppenheimer, Westcott learned that the
physicist
wanted a
cigarette
but lacked the
change
to buy some. After Westcott gave him the money he needed, Oppenheimer bought his cigarettes and lit one. Westcott then captured the image of the physicist sitting next to a
fireplace mantel
in the
Oak Ridge Guest House
holding the freshly lighted cigarette in his hand.
[13]
In spite of the informality suggested by the cigarette,
University of Tennessee
photography professor Baldwin Lee points out that the photo was carefully planned and posed. According to Lee, Westcott instructed Oppenheimer to sit "slightly askance" and to lean forward slightly, and then he took the photograph from a low vantage point that "makes the viewer physically look up at the man", thus enhancing the subject's perceived importance. Lee's critique also notes that Oppenheimer's gaze does not appear to be directed anywhere in the room, but instead is aimed at "something very distant and something only he can see."
[14]
Exhibits and publications
[
edit
]
Much of Ed Westcott's photographic work was
classified
when it was first created, and some of it remained classified for many years, but access to his work is now largely unrestricted.
[12]
About 5,000
negatives
are archived by the
National Archives
in Washington, DC.
[2]
His photographs have been widely reproduced, often without naming him as the photographer, in publications and exhibits about the Manhattan Project.
[12]
The first museum exhibition devoted to Westcott's work was organized by the
Children's Museum of Oak Ridge
in 1981, entitled "Oak Ridge Seen 1943?1947: 20 Photographs by Edward Westcott". In 2005, the
Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture
at the University of Tennessee in
Knoxville
mounted an exhibition of his photos, entitled "Through the Lens of Ed Westcott: A Photographic History of World War II's Secret City". The
American Museum of Science and Energy
and the Children's Museum of Oak Ridge both have exhibits devoted to Westcott and his work,
[9]
[15]
in addition to displaying his photos as part of exhibits on the city's history. A selection of works from the Ewing Gallery exhibit is now a touring museum exhibit.
[16]
A photograph of an Oak Ridge
supermarket
that Westcott created in 1945, "Tulip Town Market, Grove Centre", was featured by the National Archives as part of a 2005?2006 exhibit named "The Way We Worked".
[17]
[18]
Collections of Westcott's Oak Ridge photographs have been published in the catalog to the Ewing Gallery exhibit (University of Tennessee, 2005;
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
) and in the book
Oak Ridge
by Ed Westcott (
Arcadia Publishing
, 2005;
ISBN
0-7385-4170-2
,
ISBN
978-0-7385-4170-9
). A photo by Westcott of
shift change
at Y-12 during the Manhattan Project, blown up to 20 feet (6.1 m) by 50 feet (15 m), is displayed on the wall of the cafeteria at the Y-12 National Nuclear Security Complex.
[19]
Personal life
[
edit
]
Westcott resided in Oak Ridge. He was married to Esther Seigenthaler Westcott for 56 years before her death. They had five children.
[2]
[20]
His grandson Phil works as a photographer in Alaska for the
National Park Service
, documenting the effects of
global warming
. In 2005, Westcott suffered a stroke that impaired his speech.
[11]
The Oak Ridge
Kroger
Marketplace shopping center, which opened in 2014, is named the "Westcott Center" in his honor.
[21]
Westcott died on March 29, 2019, in Oak Ridge, at the age of 97.
[22]
Gallery
[
edit
]
-
Shift change at the
Y-12
during the Manhattan Project
-
Oak Ridge supermarket. Exhibited by National Archives with the title "Tulip Town Market, Grove Center"
-
Calutron
operators at the Y-12 plant in Oak Ridge. This photo motivated
Denise Kiernan
to write
Girls of Atomic City
.
[19]
-
Workers load uranium slugs into the X-10 Graphite Reactor's concrete face.
References
[
edit
]
- ^
a
b
c
d
Welsh, Teresa Smith.
"The Early Photography of Ed Westcott from the Manhattan Project to the Cold War, 1942?1959"
(Online exhibit). Knoxville:
University of Tennessee
. Archived from
the original
on April 30, 2014.
- ^
a
b
c
d
e
f
Smith, D. Ray (February 21, 2006). "Ed Westcott ? Oak Ridge Photographer Extraordinaire".
The Oak Ridger
.
- ^
a
b
Baldwin Lee (2005), "James Edward Westcott: Photographer", in:
Through the Lens of Ed Westcott, A Photographic History of World War II's Secret City
, University of Tennessee.
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
. Page 16.
- ^
Majors, Beverly (February 3, 2012).
"Picture this! Famed photog celebrates 90th birthday"
.
The Oak Ridger
. Retrieved
July 31,
2015
.
- ^
a
b
Lee, Baldwin (2005).
James Edward Westcott: Photographer
. University of Tennessee. p. 15.
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
.
- ^
Yates, Sam (2005).
The Coincidence of Ed Westcott and Oak Ridge, Tennessee
. University of Tennessee. p. 10.
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
.
- ^
Smith, D. Ray (May 2, 2006). "Eyewitness to the Death of John Hendrix".
The Oak Ridger
.
- ^
Ed Westcott (2005)
Oak Ridge
, Arcadia Publishing,
ISBN
0-7385-4170-2
,
ISBN
978-0-7385-4170-9
. Page 8.
- ^
a
b
"AMSE Opens Westcott Photo History Exhibit"
. American Museum of Science and Energy. July 16, 2009. Archived from
the original
on March 7, 2012
. Retrieved
January 29,
2011
.
- ^
a
b
c
"Scope and Content of Photographs of Construction, Facilities, and Community Life at Oak Ridge and Other Manhattan Project Sites (1943?1946), Accession Number NN3-434-91-2"
.
National Archives and Records Administration
. January 29, 2011.
- ^
a
b
Barrett, Chris (November 14, 2012).
"Ed Westcott's Secret City Photos - Seventy years out, the world remembers the Manhattan Project through the artful efforts of a gifted young photographer"
.
Metro Pulse
. Archived from
the original
on September 24, 2015
. Retrieved
July 31,
2015
.
- ^
a
b
c
Sam Yates (2005), "The Coincidence of Ed Westcott and Oak Ridge, Tennessee", in:
Through the Lens of Ed Westcott, A Photographic History of World War II's Secret City
, University of Tennessee.
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
. page 13.
- ^
Munger, Frank (June 30, 2010).
"Oppenheimer"
.
Knoxville News-Sentinel
. Archived from
the original
on March 5, 2012.
- ^
Baldwin Lee (2005), "James Edward Westcott: Photographer", in:
Through the Lens of Ed Westcott, A Photographic History of World War II's Secret City
, University of Tennessee.
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
. Page 23.
- ^
"Exhibits"
.
Children's Museum of Oak Ridge
. Archived from
the original
on February 9, 2012
. Retrieved
January 29,
2011
.
- ^
"Through the Lens of Ed Westcott: Photographic History of World War II's Secret City"
. Kingsport, Tennessee: Kingsport Arts. November 5, 2007. Archived from
the original
on March 17, 2012.
- ^
Bustard, Bruce I. (2005).
"The Way We Worked"
.
Prologue
(magazine).
37
(4, Winter 2005).
National Archives and Records Administration
.
- ^
"The Way We Worked: Photographs from the National Archives"
. National Archives and Records Administration. 2007
. Retrieved
January 29,
2011
.
- ^
a
b
Majors, Beverly (December 23, 2013). "Westcott 'Boot'ed; Epitomizes person 'Muddy Boot' created for".
The Oak Ridger
.
- ^
Baldwin Lee (2005), "James Edward Westcott: Photographer", in:
Through the Lens of Ed Westcott, A Photographic History of World War II's Secret City
, University of Tennessee.
ISBN
0-9761663-1-3
. Page 18.
- ^
Bob Fowler (May 7, 2013).
"New retail center to be named after famed photographer Westcott"
.
Knoxville News Sentinel
.
- ^
Smith, Donna; Smith, D. Ray (March 29, 2019).
"Manhattan Project photographer Ed Westcott dies at 97"
.
The Oak Ridger
. Archived from
the original
on March 29, 2019
. Retrieved
March 29,
2019
.
External links
[
edit
]
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