Spitfires over Kiriwina, Trobriand Islands

Depicts four soldiers on the ground with a truck, near a runway, while overhead, in the sky, Spitfires fly over. Emil Sodersten (1899-1961) was an architect. From 1915 he studied part-time at Sydney Technical College and in 1923 joined the firm of architects F R Hall & Prentice in Brisbane. By 1925 he had returned to Sydney and established his own practice and in the same year closed his office to prepare a set of drawings for the international competition to design a national war museum, the Australian War Memorial, in Canberra. During the 1930s, Sodersten designed residential buildings in Sydney and in 1942 enlisted in the RAAF, serving in New Guinea as a Flight Lieutenant with no. 13 Survey & Design Unit. He was demobilised in 1945.