Alfred T. Palmer and "Rosie the Riveter"

Figure 17. Alfred T. Palmer, “Production. B-17F heavy bombers. A riveting crew at the Long Beach, California, plant of Douglas Aircraft Company, assembles the frame of a nacelle for a B-17F heavy bomber,1942.” Source: Library of Congress

Figure 18. The full title assigned this photograph  is worth noting: Alfred T. Palmer, “The six plane factories of the Douglas Aircraft Company have been termed an industrial melting pot, since men and women of fifty-eight national origins work side by side in pushing America’s plane output,” 1942. Source: Library of Congress

The most enduring images to emerge from this enterprise were Alfred T. Palmer’s color photographs of newly mobilized female munitions workers, “Rosie the Riveters,” used to advertise for war bonds.  [View some of these photographs, as well as the war bond ads.]

But these pictures were drawn from a much larger body of work Palmer produced in the aircraft plants around Long Beach, California that capture not just the feminization of the workforce but its racial integration in the early 1940s. While many of these photos clearly are posed, several are shots of actual work being performed in collective fashion (see figures 17-18).