Ed Westcott
| Ed Westcott | |
|---|---|
Westcott in 2004
|
|
| Born |
January 20, 1922 Chattanooga, Tennessee |
| Nationality | American |
| Occupation | Photographer |
| Known for | Manhattan Project photography |
James Edward Westcott (born January 20, 1922) is a photographer who worked for the United States government in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, during the Manhattan Project and the Cold War. As one of the few people permitted to have a camera in the Oak Ridge area during the Manhattan Project, he created the main visual record of the construction and operation of the Oak Ridge production facilities and of civilian life in the enclosed community of Oak Ridge.
Ed Westcott was born on January 20, 1922, in Chattanooga, Tennessee, the son of Jamie and Lucille Westcott, and moved to Nashville with his family as a child. After Ed expressed an interest in photography, his father saved for a year to buy him a Foth Derby camera that cost $25. The gift of that camera in the Depression year of 1934 started young Ed on the path to his future career. During his teenage years, he got into the business of developing film for friends and neighbors and worked in several Nashville portrait studios. In 1941, he joined the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, as a photographer in the Corps' Nashville District. His job for the Corps sent him around the region to create photographic documentation of several dams, a site in Tennessee that later became prisoner of war camp, and the airport and other facilities at Fort Campbell on the Tennessee-Kentucky border.
In December 1942, the Army Corps transferred the 20-year-old Westcott to the Clinton Engineer Works at the then-secret Oak Ridge site. He later recalled that:
By November 1942, work was nearing completion on army camps, air bases, dams and enemy internment camps in seven southern states where I photographed many areas for site selection and construction progress reports for the US Corps of Engineers. I was one of the last of the 10 cameramen to leave the Nashville District office of the Corps of Engineers and the only one to accept a transfer with the engineers. Having a choice of a project in Alaska or a new job starting near Knoxville that would take a predicted five years to complete, I selected Knoxville.
...
Wikipedia