Navy photographer wanted his work to be shared
HACKENSACK, N.J. — Herman Schnipper, a mild-mannered Navy photographer who chronicled the danger and drudgery of war while on board the light cruiser USS Astoria, died Wednesday at his home here, where his vast trove of World War II images is stored.
He was 92.
“I don’t want them to be put in a box and forgotten. I want to show people the war,” Schnipper told The Record in 2014, referring to the black-and-white prints he has held on to since his military discharge a few months after the war’s end.
At the time of the interview, Schnipper was in declining health and his family felt an urgency to decide what to do with the photographs, which they want to be accessible to the public.
Schnipper, who worked as lithographer, had given 30 to the Columbia River Maritime Museum in Astoria, Ore., the town for which his ship was named. But he had more than 1,000 others.
Schnipper’s daughter, Sari Shlufman, said Wednesday that the family concluded they could not could not part with the archive while Schnipper was alive. She said the family has been in touch with museums and the U.S. Naval Academy and that decisions are forthcoming.
The family will keep the cameras Schnipper used on the ship, she said.
“Herman captured not just the combat in the Pacific, but humanity,” said Brent Jones, a USS Astoria enthusiast from Texas who scanned all of the prints during multiple visits to New Jersey.
“He did a great job of showing people in the moment, whether shipmates in the laundry or men drinking coffee or just enjoying downtime," Jones said. He has several images that capture the isolation African-American sailors would have felt aboard the ship. He was so inclusive in his work.”
Mr. Schnipper’s images fill Jones’ website, mighty90.com, which preserves the history of the light cruiser Astoria. They also will be a part of a book about the Astoria that Jones is writing.
Jones said 1,300 men were “packed into a 600-foot-long ship.”
“Very few are still alive,” he said. “I now have only four active contacts, and the youngest is 92.”
Fewer than 700,000 of the nearly 16 million Americans who served in World War II are alive today, according to the National World War II Museum in New Orleans. More than 400 veterans of that era die every day, almost 160,000 this year.
Jones grew close to Schnipper and his family.
“I think Herman was much more comfortable behind the camera than in front of it,” he said. “He avoided the limelight and always put the other guy first.”
Schnipper, a native of Bayonne, N.J., was given a camera and a darkroom after the Navy learned of his photography hobby. He made a copy of every photograph he took for the Navy and kept the negatives.
Graveside services will be at 11 a.m. Friday at King Solomon Memorial Park in Clifton, N.J. Survivors include his wife of 56 years, Julie; daughters Sari Shlufman of Tenafly, N.J., and Rachel Ohnouna of Fort Lee, N.J.; and three grandchildren.
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