Ed Westcott James Edward Westcott ( born January 20 , 1922 ) is a photographer who worked for the U . S . 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 . Early life and career . Ed Westcott was born in 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 . Photographer for the Manhattan Project and its aftermath . 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 was the 29th employee hired for the Manhattan Project in Oak Ridge , where he was to work as an official government photographer from 1942 to 1966 . During much of World War II he was employed by the Roane - Anderson Company , under contract to the Army Corps . In addition to photographing the construction and mechanical workings of the X - 10 , K - 25 , Y - 12 , and S - 50 production facilities , he photographed civilian activities in Oak Ridge for the community ' s Army - sponsored weekly newspaper , the " Oak Ridge Journal " . All of Westcott ' s wartime photos were produced with either a Speed Graphic or an 8x10 Deardorff view camera . Some of his images were among the photos that were distributed to news media with the announcement of the first atomic bomb and the secret project that created it . In the weeks before the bombing of Hiroshima , many prints of the photos were made in secrecy in preparation for the announcement . In June 1945 , Westcott became an Army employee again , and in the post - war years he transitioned to employment with the U . S . Atomic Energy Commission ( AEC ) after its formation in 1946 . In 1966 he was assigned to the AEC headquarters near Washington , DC , in Germantown , Maryland , where he worked for the AEC and its successor agencies ( the Energy Research and Development Administration and Department of Energy ) until retiring in 1977 . During Westcott ' s 35 - year professional career , his assignments included creating photographic documentation of numerous notable people , including Manhattan Project scientists J . Robert Oppenheimer , Arthur Compton , Glenn Seaborg , Vannevar Bush , Ernest O . Lawrence , and James Bryant Conant , U . S . Army Generals Leslie Groves and Maxwell Taylor , Army Colonel Kenneth Nichols , Admiral Hyman Rickover , Secretary of War Robert P . Patterson , U . S . Senators Estes Kefauver and Kenneth McKellar of Tennessee and Robert Taft of Ohio , Tennessee Valley Authority director and AEC chairman David Lilienthal , and seven or eight U . S . President s . Westcott ' s February 1946 photo portrait of Oppenheimer is highly regarded for depicting the Manhattan Project scientific director as a man weary from the tremendous weight of his experience . When he met with Oppenheimer , Westcott learned that the physicist wanted a cigarette but lacked the change to buy some . After Westcott gave him the money he needed , Oppenheimer bought his cigarettes and lit one . Westcott then captured the image of the physicist sitting next to a fireplace mantel in the Oak Ridge Guest House holding the freshly lighted cigarette in his hand . In spite of the informality suggested by the cigarette , University of Tennessee photography professor Baldwin Lee points out that the photo was carefully planned and posed . According to Lee , Westcott instructed Oppenheimer to sit " slightly askance " and to lean forward slightly , and then he took the photograph from a low vantage point that " makes the viewer physically look up at the man , " thus enhancing the subject ' s perceived importance . Lee ' s critique also notes that Oppenheimer ' s gaze does not appear to be directed anywhere in the room , but instead is aimed at " something very distant and something only he can see . " Exhibits and publications . Much of Ed Westcott ' s photographic work was classified when it was first created , and some of it remained classified for many years , but access to his work is now largely unrestricted . About 5 , 000 negative s are archived by the National Archives and Records Administration . His photographs have been widely reproduced , often without naming him as the photographer , in publications and exhibits about the Manhattan Project . The first museum exhibition devoted to Westcott ' s work was organized by the Children ' s Museum of Oak Ridge in 1981 , entitled " Oak Ridge Seen 1943 - 1947 : 20 Photographs by Edward Westcott . " In 2005 , the Ewing Gallery of Art and Architecture at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville mounted an exhibition of his photos , entitled " Through the Lens of Ed Westcott : A Photographic History of World War II ' s Secret City " . The American Museum of Science and Energy and the Children ' s Museum in Oak Ridge both have exhibits devoted to Westcott and his work , in addition to displaying his photos as part of exhibits on the city ' s history . A selection of works from the Ewing Gallery exhibit is now a touring museum exhibit . A photograph of an Oak Ridge supermarket that Westcott created in 1945 , " Tulip Town Market , Grove Center , " was featured by the National Archives in Washington , DC , as part of a 2005 - 2006 exhibit named " The Way We Worked . " Collections of Westcott ' s Oak Ridge photographs have been published in the catalog to the Ewing Gallery exhibit ( University of Tennessee , 2005 ; ISBN 0 - 9761663 - 1 - 3 ) and in the book " Oak Ridge " by Ed Westcott ( Arcadia Publishing , 2005 ; ISBN 0 - 7385 - 4170 - 2 , ISBN 978 - 0 - 7385 - 4170 - 9 ) . Personal . Westcott resides in Oak Ridge . He was married to Esther Seigenthaler Westcott for 56 years before her death . They were the parents of five children . Legacy . The Oak Ridge Kroger Marketplace shopping center , set to open in 2014 , is to be named the " Westcott Center " in honor of Ed Westcott .