For the Florida photographer with a phonetically similar name, see Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry Uelsmann

Jerry N. Uelsmann is an American photographer.Uelsmann was born in Detroit, Michigan. When he was in high school, his interest in photography sparked. He originally believed that using a camera could allow him to exist outside of himself, to live in a world captured through the lens...

Jerry Yulsman (born February 8, 1924 - August 6, 1999) was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 novelist and a photographer best known for his photographs of Jack Kerouac

Jack Kerouac

Jean-Louis "Jack" Lebris de Kerouac was an American novelist and poet. He is considered a literary iconoclast and, alongside William S. Burroughs and Allen Ginsberg, a pioneer of the Beat Generation. Kerouac is recognized for his spontaneous method of writing, covering topics such as Catholic...

, notably the cover illustration on Joyce Johnson's memoir Minor Characters.

Yulsman's first camera was a $13.50 Argus, given to him by his aunt as a 12th birthday present. He used it to photograph Roosevelt

Franklin D. Roosevelt

Franklin Delano Roosevelt , also known by his initials, FDR, was the 32nd President of the United States and a central figure in world events during the mid-20th century, leading the United States during a time of worldwide economic crisis and world war...

 in a torchlit parade. "I was a good photographer," he recalled. "I understood both the language and the magic. It seemed to come naturally, like a gift from Providence."

Expelled from Simon Grantz High School, Yulsman lied about his age in March 1941 in order to enlist in the U.S. Army Air Corps. In the Army photography school at Denver's Lowry Field

Lowry Air Force Base

Lowry Air Force Base is a former United States Air Force base located in the cities of Aurora and Denver, Colorado. Its primary mission throughout its existence was Air Force technical training and was heavily involved with the training of United States Army Air Forces bomber crews during World...

, he learned to operate a "gun camera." Serving in North Africa during World War II

World War II

World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...

, he was promoted to Master Sergeant, and on August 1, 1943, he flew in Operation Tidal Wave, a bombing raid on the Romanian oil refineries of Ploeşti, which were a major source of oil for the Nazi war machine. This combat action brought him the Distinguished Flying Cross

Distinguished Flying Cross (United States)

The Distinguished Flying Cross is a medal awarded to any officer or enlisted member of the United States armed forces who distinguishes himself or herself in support of operations by "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight, subsequent to November 11, 1918." The...

, which is awarded for "heroism or extraordinary achievement while participating in an aerial flight."

After the war, Yulsman moved to Manhattan where he became a successful freelance photojournalist, shooting "jazz, politics and girls" and hanging out in Greenwich Village at the Limelight Cafe, while contributing to Playboy

Playboy

Playboy is an American men's magazine that features photographs of nude women as well as journalism and fiction. It was founded in Chicago in 1953 by Hugh Hefner and his associates, and funded in part by a $1,000 loan from Hefner's mother. The magazine has grown into Playboy Enterprises, Inc., with...

, Collier's

Collier's Weekly

Collier's Weekly was an American magazine founded by Peter Fenelon Collier and published from 1888 to 1957. With the passage of decades, the title was shortened to Collier's....

, Look

Look (American magazine)

Look was a bi-weekly, general-interest magazine published in Des Moines, Iowa from 1937 to 1971, with more of an emphasis on photographs than articles...

and other magazines. During this period he teamed up with author Cornelius Ryan

Cornelius Ryan

Cornelius Ryan, was an Irish journalist and author mainly known for his writings on popular military history, especially his World War II books: The Longest Day: June 6, 1944 D-Day , The Last Battle , and A Bridge Too Far .-Early life:Ryan was born in Dublin and educated at Synge Street CBS,...

 (The Longest Day

The Longest Day (book)

The Longest Day is a book by Cornelius Ryan published in 1959, telling the story of D-Day, the first day of the World War II invasion of Normandy. It includes details of Operation Deadstick, the coup de main operation by gliderborne troops to capture both Pegasus Bridge and Horsa Bridge before the...

) on a story about the world's fastest submarine. He also did photographs for two Dick Gregory

Dick Gregory

Richard Claxton "Dick" Gregory is an American comedian, social activist, social critic, writer, and entrepreneur....

 books, From the Back of the Bus (Avon, 1962) and What's Happening? (1965), which offered instruction on "how to recognize Uncle Tom."

During the 1970s, Yulsman worked for the Ringling Brothers Barnum & Bailey Circus

Ringling Brothers Circus

The Ringling Brothers Circus was a circus founded in the United States in 1884 by five of the seven Ringling Brothers: Albert , August , Otto , Alfred T. , Charles , John , and Henry...

 for four years and taught photography at the School of Visual Arts

School of Visual Arts

The School of Visual Arts , is a proprietary art school located in Manhattan, New York City, and is widely considered to be one of the leading art schools in the United States. It was established in 1947 by co-founders Silas H. Rhodes and Burne Hogarth as the Cartoonists and Illustrators School and...

. He wrote several instructional books on photography, including Jerry Yulsman Tells How to Take Glamor Photographs (1960), The Complete Book of 8mm Movie Making (1972), The Complete Book of 35mm Photography (1976) and Color Photography Simplified (1977). His personal approach to photography was expressed when he stated, "I believe that the main function of photography is a historical one. I think of photos first as historical documents, delineating time and place, and only secondarily as possible works of art."

Jack Kerouac

His color photos of Kerouac with Joyce Johnson

Joyce Johnson

Joyce Johnson is an American author of fiction and nonfiction who won a National Book Critics Circle Award for her memoir Minor Characters about her relationship with Jack Kerouac.-Personal life:...

 were taken in Greenwich Village outside the Kettle of Fish Bar on MacDougal Street during the fall of 1957, and one of these was used by Johnson on the jacket of her book Minor Characters because the image metaphorically shows her as a minor character in the background. In this series of photographs, first published in Pageant

Pageant (magazine)

Pageant was a 20th-century monthly magazine published in the United States from November 1944 until February 1977. Printed in a digest size format, it became Coronet magazine's leading competition, although it aimed for comparison to Reader's Digest....

, Johnson is always seen standing in the background. This is because she thought Yulsman only wanted Kerouac in the frame, so she stepped aside. However, Yulsman cleverly repositioned the angle to include her, adding to the fascination of the images. However, when one of the photos from this session was used for a Gap ad, airbrushing was used to remove Johnson from the picture.

Novels

Yulsman began writing fiction in the early 1980s and published two novels. Elleander Morning (Random House, 1984) is an alternative history in which World War II never happened. In the book's opening pages, Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler

Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...

 is sitting in a café in Vienna in 1913 when he is assassinated by an American woman, Elleander Morning. The novel won several awards, including the 1986 Ditmar Award

Ditmar Award

The Ditmar Award has been awarded annually since 1969 at the Australian National Science Fiction Convention to recognise achievement in Australian science fiction and science fiction fandom...

 for best international fiction and the Science Fiction Club Deutschland's Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis

Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis

The Kurd-Laßwitz-Preis is possibly the best-known science fiction award from Germany. The award is named after the science fiction author Kurd Laßwitz....

.

The Last Liberator (Dutton, 1991) is based on Yulsman's WWII experiences. He planned a novel based on the Collyer brothers

Collyer brothers

Homer Lusk Collyer and Langley Wakeman Collyer , known as the Collyer brothers, were two American brothers who became famous because of their bizarre nature and compulsive hoarding...

 but abandoned it when he learned that Marcia Davenport

Marcia Davenport

Marcia Davenport was an American author and music critic. She was born Marcia Glick in New York City on June 9, 1903, the daughter of Bernard Glick and the opera singer Alma Gluck, and she became the stepdaughter of violinist Efrem Zimbalist when Alma Gluck remarried.Davenport traveled extensively...

 had already fictionalized the brothers in My Brother's Keeper

My Brother's Keeper (novel)

My Brother's Keeper is a novel by Marcia Davenport based on the true story of the Collyer brothers. Published in 1954 by Charles Scribner, it was a Book-of-the-Month Club selection and was later reprinted as a 1956 Cardinal paperback with a cover painting by Tom Dunn.Inspired by the 1947 New York...

(1954). Under pseudonyms, he wrote adult fiction, including the first three volumes of The Intimate Memoir of Dame Jenny Everleigh, which was later serialized.

In 1999, Yulsman died of lung cancer. At the time of his death, he was working on Gotham, a novel celebrating New York. Yulsman's fourth wife, Barbara Woike, is an Associated Press

Associated Press

The Associated Press is an American news agency. The AP is a cooperative owned by its contributing newspapers, radio and television stations in the United States, which both contribute stories to the AP and use material written by its staff journalists...

 editor and is remarried and living in Brooklyn

Brooklyn

Brooklyn is the most populous of New York City's five boroughs, with nearly 2.6 million residents, and the second-largest in area. Since 1896, Brooklyn has had the same boundaries as Kings County, which is now the most populous county in New York State and the second-most densely populated...

. His son, Tom Yulsman, is a science and environmental journalist and co-director of the Center for Environmental Journalism at the University of Colorado, Boulder.

Sources

• Rettig, Patty and Leah Sparks. Little Known Literaries.