You’ve seen this photograph, right?  A photographer snapped it as crowds spilled out into the streets of New York City celebrating V-J Day (Victory over Japan) on August 14, 1945.  The sailor grabbed the nurse and kissed her in exuberance. The moment was captured on film by Alfred Eisenstaedt  and has become iconic.

Well, the sailor is George Mendonsa.  He died yesterday, February 18, 2019, at the age of 95.  His on-line obituary says that “Mendonsa fell and had a seizure at the assisted living facility in Middletown, Rhode Island, where he lived with his wife of 70 years.”

I wasn’t around when the events of the photo took place.  But I have seen this picture all of my life.  It bears the title “V-J Day in Times Square.”  But for most people it is simply “The Kiss.”  It is a reminder of the power of the photograph.  “A picture is worth a thousand words” is one of those clichés that just happens to be true.  Photographs evoke memories and emotions easily.  I can describe an image in just a few words, and you see it clearly.  You also probably have some feeling that relates to that memory.  Let’s try some:

John Kennedy Jr. saluting as his father’s coffin passes by:

The woman kneeling and crying over one of the slain at Kent State:

The evacuation of Saigon;

The Challenger explosion (“Massive malfunction”);

One of the Twin Towers smoking before it fell.

I suppose that video recordings will replace static images.  Newspapers and magazines are declining in circulation.  Video clips replace photographs as the conveyors of news and other occurrences.  The significance of photographs is now confined to the Selfie.

For me, a bit of a dinosaur, that’s too bad.

(In the interest of accuracy, the nurse in “The Kiss” is Greta Zimmer Friedman, who died in 2016 at the age of 92.)