Fine line
There is a fine line between good art and propaganda and oh boy, did Life magazine tread it ever so carefully.
The above photo is of Shirley Slade, an American Women’s Airforce Service pilot (WASP for short), on the July 1943 cover of Life.
By 1942, the US war machine was running short on pilots, not planes, and they turned their beady eyes towards the doe eyed and said ‘Aha! Problem solved.’
Well not exactly.
There is some debate over how much combat, if any, the WASP saw; even if the thought of loosing female pilots did not sit well with the PR department, the thought of female pilots sitting on plane wings certainly did.
As a 22 year old trainee pilot, Shirley Slade was the perfect combination of tough and wistful, with a face that had, through many generations, pioneered and succeeded through the most difficult of situations.
Is that photograph art or propaganda?
Perhaps, in wartime, there is no perceptible difference.
And in peacetime?
Depends what you call propaganda.
There’s that word …
Keep reading with a 7-day free trial
Subscribe to Aoife Long's Newsletter is now at spiritandluxury.com to keep reading this post and get 7 days of free access to the full post archives.