One striking but often overlooked technological achievement is our ability to capture images of the individual amid our vast and hurried family of humanity. Photographer Wayne Miller's lifelong journey expresses the experience of the "little guy."

"Photography is a many splendored vehicle," said Miller, who visited the Palmer Museum of Art last weekend to lecture on his work, including his display at Palmer, and at the Society for Photographic Education Conference.

Miller's journey began around the time when fellow photographer Edward Steichen asked him to join the Navy Photographic Unit during World War II. His orders were vague but his freedom to photograph life was great, Miller said.

Miller recalls Steichen, who was not only a fellow photographer but also a mentor and partner in their exhibition, "The Family of Man," told him not to photograph the war but to photograph the little guy.

Miller's display, "Photographs of Tokyo, Yokohama, and Hiroshima, September 1945," which opened Oct. 10 and runs until March, is a collection of some of the photographs he took as the first American to photograph Japan after the atomic bomb was dropped. His display is scheduled to be seen only at Palmer.

But the display does not show images of destroyed cities.

"I think that Wayne Miller is a very humanistic photographer," said Palmer curator Glenn Willumson,who worked with Miller to create the display.

Willumson said that people do not look at these photographs to see destruction but to see the spirit of the people and the idealistic landscape in which war is unimaginable.

Miller's negatives from the war years belong to the government and currently exist in the national archives. He hasn't even seen most of the images of the war that he captured.

Miller, who was in his early 20s at the time, sent his negatives back to Washington, D.C. where they were used to promote Navy interests and were made available for various publications.

While photographing in Japan, Miller was close to a people who had just been at war with America. Nonetheless, Miller said he never even received a frown.

"There was a universal sense of relief and recognition that we were all just people," Miller said.

"It brings it home because it's what you'd see college students or anyone do," said Laurence King (senior-art), looking at a photograph depicting several Japanese soldiers lighting a cigarette.

Miller said that a photographer must be the invisible and empathetic observer.

"If I was feeling and sharing the emotion, I would know some of those qualities would be (in the photograph)," Miller said.

Miller also said the subject must know the photographer is looking at the world through his or her eyes.

"I became their instrument," he added. "Once you're no longer invading their privacy, you're part of their privacy."

Miller's career was only beginning when World War II ended. From 1949 to 1953, he worked for Life magazine, the most exciting time in the world of photojournalism, he said.

"The camera was king and the writer was born to help the photographer," Miller said.

Times have changed the role of photography, however, Miller added.

"So much of our social intercourse is dollar driven (and) it's the fluff that sells," he said.

Miller explained sponsors are no longer around for the photographer taking the picture that tells a story. Now, he said, images are created to accompany the story.

The people who view today's images have also changed, Miller said. After the war, people did not have the other sources of visual information, and now people are very impatient for information.

One of the highlights of Miller's career was his work as co-curator with Steichen on the monumental exhibition, "The Family of Man" that opened in 1955 and was seen by more people that any previous photographic display.

" 'The Family of Man' was an exhibition that resulted from what the photographs said about mankind," Miller said.

Miller stopped taking photographs about 20 years ago and turned toward the preservation of the environment. While on an assignment in Washington, he fell in love with the trees.

"The forest got my eyes and heart," he said. Miller served as assistant to the director of the National Park Service and works to protect the interests of the small-forest land owner. Once again, he is dedicated to the life of the little guy.

"Wayne is definitely what they refer to as a people photographer," Willumson said.

Miller said that he took to heart Steichen's advice to pay attention to the little guy.