A Signed Photograph of Earhart Taken by the Photographer for Lockheed Aircraft

In 1935, while her Lockheed Vega was under repairs at Lockheed Aircraft, officials at that company requested that the world’s most famous woman aviator pose for some publicity photographs. Earhart agreed, and Lockheed’s best photographer, Joe Washburn, received the assignment. He took about a dozen shots, a number of them so good that they have become classics; one was used on the Amelia Earhart stamp issued by the U.S. postal service.

An 8 by 10 inch black and white photograph of Earhart, one of the Washburn series showing her in front of her Lockheed Vega, the same aircraft in which she made a number of historic flights, signed.

Washburn told friends an interesting, related story. He claimed it was well known at Lockheed that Earhart was having an affair with another aviator, Paul Mantz (who was known as the King of the Hollywood Pilots). Mantz had trained Earhart in long range flight and navigation, and told her she wasn’t ready for her final (and fatal) flight. However, the story goes, she was pushed into it by her publicity-hungry husband, George Putnam.