A new exhibition at the Harry S. Truman Presidential Library and Museum offers a poignant look at the first few months of the Korean War through the lens of Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer Max Desfor. The Forgotten War: Korea 1950 features 36 stunning photographs of the frantic early months of the war from September to December 1950, when the fate of the Korean peninsula was in question.
Max Desfor, an Associated Press photographer, spent three turbulent years in Korea, capturing the people’s plight and the struggles of American soldiers on the battlefields.
Among the photographs is his dramatic 1950 Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Korean citizens scrambling to safety by crawling over the wreckage of a bridge destroyed by bombs. In a short video that accompanies the exhibit, the late photographer describes his thoughts as he documented the devastation.