On Display June 6, 2021 through October 17, 2021
Caught on Film: The Wartime Photography of Ken Regele and the US Army Signal Corps fittingly opens on the 76th anniversary of D-Day. The exhibit draws from the Museum’s Ken Regele Photographic Collection. Each photograph gives the viewer a rare, up close perspective on various aspects of World War II.
Ken Regele was trained by the United States Army to be a cameraman in the US Signal Corps. These photographers and filmmakers were often on the war’s front lines, armed with nothing more than their cameras. The Signal Corps took thousands of photographs and shot hundreds of feet of film during their operations. Ken and his team travelled across the European continent, documenting Allied operations for review by military commanders. The documentation was later used by post-war military historians. Before Ken was honorably discharged after the war, he took two rolls of film with him, whose negatives contained a wide variety of images taken by Signal Corps photographic teams. He held onto these rolls, keeping them in a drawer for nearly sixty years, before donating them to the Museum. One of these rolls was blank; the other possessed numerous incredible images, from preparations for D-Day to Liberation and the end of the war in Europe.
In addition to combat scenes, the Regele Collection Signal Corps images include photographs of military life behind the front lines. They documented all sorts of activities, ranging from those of the average G.I. up to Supreme Allied Commander Dwight D. Eisenhower and his Generals.
