Iconic Photos of Life

How can an image change the world?

The invention of photography had changed not only the way we understand our history but also the way we think and perceive the world.

Life itself created some moments which go beyond that time and place and grasp our souls, whisper some provoking words and make us move, stand up, fight, shout and anything about being alive. They become Iconic Photos of Life. You can find below some of them with their stories.

1.

The 1968 Olympics Black Power Salute: African American athletes Tommie Smith and John Carlos raise their fists in a gesture of solidarity at the 1968 Olympic games. Australian Silver medalist Peter Norman wore an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge in support of their protest. Both Americans were expelled from the games as a result. Associated Press / AP

Tommie Smith and John Carlos, 1968 Olympic medal winners Photograph by Platon, originally published in The New Yorker (2011)

2.

Jewish prisoners at the moment of their liberation from an internment camp “death train” near the Elbe in 1945. Via hfcsd.org

3.

Australian Scott Jones kisses his Canadian girlfriend Alex Thomas after she was knocked to the ground by a police officer’s riot shield in Vancouver, British Columbia. Canadians rioted after the Vancouver Canucks lost the Stanley Cup to the Boston Bruins. Rich Lam / Getty Images

4.

A mother comforts her son in Concord, Alabama, near his house which was completely destroyed by a tornado in April of 2011. Jeff Roberts / AP

5.

A French civilian cries in despair as Nazis occupy Paris during World War II. Via iconicphotos.wordpress.com

6.

A firefighter gives water to a koala during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires that burned across Victoria, Australia, in 2009. Mark Pardew / Reuters

7.

Terri Gurrola is reunited with her daughter after serving in Iraq for 7 months. projects.ajc.com / Via polichicksonline.com

8.

“La Jeune Fille a la Fleur,” a photograph by Marc Riboud, shows the young pacifist Jane Rose Kasmir planting a flower on the bayonets of guards at the Pentagon during a protest against the Vietnam War on October 21, 1967. The photograph would eventually become the symbol of the flower power movement. bokeh.fr

9.

In the spring of 1989, Jeff Widener was working for the Associated Press in Beijing, where political turmoil around student protests was escalating. On June 4, the Chinese government cracked down hard, killing some students who had gathered in Tiananmen Square. The next morning, Widener was dispatched to the unfolding chaos. With film rolls stuffed down his pants and camera equipment hidden in his jacket, he made his way to a sixth-floor room of a hotel on the edge of the plaza. Then suddenly, something caught his attention: A column of tanks rolling by, and a man carrying shopping bags, who had just stepped out in front of them. “I assume he thinks he’s going to die,” remembers Widener. “But he doesn’t care, because for whatever reason—either he’s lost a loved one or he’s just had it with the government, or whatever it is—his statement is more important than his own life.” The result is an iconic picture of defiance in the face of aggression. “I was just relieved that I didn’t mess up,” says Widener, whose photograph appeared on the front pages of newspapers the next day from New York to London and has been known since as one of the greatest news photographs of all time. Source: Time

Comes along reporter Terri Jones. He was there on June 5th 1989 in Tiananmen Square and he too had shot the famous tank man, though somewhat inadvertently, in his mind a snapshot of the event among others. After developing the films, with the event then already extensively covered, he simply let it at that, filing the shot amongst the others of the day in his personal archives. It’s only when he read the blog post this week that he decided it was time to share it publicly. Terril Jones/Associated Press

10.

Harold Whittles hears for the first time ever after a doctor places an earpiece in his left ear. Jack Bradley, date unknown / Via thehighdefinite.com

11.

When soldiers of the 16th Regiment of the 1st Infantry Division landed at Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, photographer Robert Capa, in the employee of LIFE magazine, was among them. Capa’s D-Day photos have become classics. One of them, depicting a GI struggling through the churning surf of Omaha Beach, has survived as the definitive image of the Normandy invasion.

12.

Murder of Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief | Eddie Adams, 1968. In February 1968 during the Vietnam War, South Vietnam’s chief of National Police executed the captain of a Viet Cong death squad. The exact moment of the shooting – and the look of pain on the prisoner’s face as the bullet passes through his head – was captured by Eddie Adams in a photo that late won a Pulitzer Prize.

Bay Lop, member of the National Liberation Front, is being escorted along a street in Saigon. Just a few seconds before execution.

13.

Buddhist discontent erupted following a ban in early May on flying the Buddhist flag in Huế on Vesak, the birthday of Gautama Buddha. A large crowd of Buddhists protested the ban, defying the government by flying Buddhist flags on Vesak and marching on the government broadcasting station. Government forces fired into the crowd of protesters, killing nine people. In June of 1963, Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thích Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon.

This is the coloured version.

Just seconds before burning. Thich Quang Duc is doused with gasoline while calmly sitting down in the traditional Buddhist meditative lotus position.

14.

Neil Armstrong immediately after his, and mankind’s, very first moon walk, 1969. On July 20, 1969, Neil Armstrong became the first man to ever walk on the moon, starting a new era on the space exploration. “It suddenly struck me that that tiny pea, pretty and blue, was the Earth. I put up my thumb and shut one eye, and my thumb blotted out the planet Earth. I didn’t feel like a giant. I felt very, very small.” – Neil Armstrong

15.

Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a historic photograph taken on February 23, 1945, by Joe Rosenthal. It depicts five United States Marines and a United States Navy corpsman raising a U.S. flag atop Mount Suribachi,[1] during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II. The Rosenthal AP photo. (Photograph of Flag Raising on Iwo Jima, 02/23/1945 (NWDNS-80-G-413988; ARC Identifier: 520748); General Photographic File of the Department of Navy, 1943 – 1958; General Records of the Department of the Navy, 1804 – 1958; Record Group 80; National Archives.)

16.

On Sept. 11, 2001, AP photographer Richard Drew witnessed the twin towers imploding and filmed ‘The Falling Man’—arguably the most haunting photo from the tragedy.

17.

It was 1954, and the director Billy Wilder was filming a scene of the film The Seven Year Itch on Lexington Avenue between 52nd and 53rd Street in New York City. In the script, Marilyn Monroe and co-star Tom Ewell exit a movie theater and a breeze from the subway passing below lifts Marilyn’s skirt. Instead of rushing to cover her legs, as any decent woman of that era would have, Marilyn exclaims, “Isn’t it delicious?” The iconic image of Marilyn Monroe was shot by photographer Sam Shaw during the filming of “The Seven Year Itch.” (Photo © Sam Shaw Inc. licensed by Shaw Family Archives)

Behind the scenes

18.

The Che image was made on March 5, 1960, at a funeral service for the 136 people who were killed when a French ship carrying arms to Havana was sabotaged and blown-up. Crowds filled the street of Havana, and Korda was there working for the newspaper Revolución. As Castro’s funeral oration droned on Korda approached the speakers’ platform. With Castro were other leaders of the revolution, the French writers Jean-Paul Sartre and Simone de Beauvoir, and, of course, Che. When Korda got close to the platform, he noticed that Che — who had been standing in the back of the stage — had moved forward. “I remember his staring over the crowd on 23rd street,” Korda says. Staring up, he was struck by Guevara’s expression which he says showed, “absolute implacability,” as well as anger and pain. Korda was shooting a Leica M2 loaded with Plus-X film and had a 90mm Leica telephoto lens mounted on it. He managed to take just two frames — one vertical and one horizontal — before Che stepped away. Source: Steve Meltzer

19.

Kim Phúc and her family were residents of the village of Trang Bang, South Vietnam. On June 8, 1972, South Vietnamese planes dropped a napalm bomb on Trang Bang, which had been attacked and occupied by North Vietnamese forces.[2] Kim Phúc joined a group of civilians and South Vietnamese soldiers who were fleeing from the Caodai Temple to the safety of South Vietnamese-held positions. A South Vietnamese Air Force pilot mistook the group for enemy soldiers and diverted to attack. The bombing killed two of Kim Phúc’s cousins and two other villagers. Kim Phúc was badly burned and tore off her burning clothes. Associated Press photographer Nick Ut’s photograph of Kim Phúc running naked amid other fleeing villagers, South Vietnamese soldiers and press photographers became one of the most haunting images of the Vietnam War.

20.

The Hindenburg disaster took place on Thursday, May 6, 1937, as the German passenger airship LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire and was destroyed during its attempt to dock with its mooring mast at Naval Air Station Lakehurst, which is located adjacent to the borough of Lakehurst, New Jersey, United States. Of the 97 people on board (36 passengers and 61 crewmen), there were 35 fatalities (13 passengers and 22 crewmen). One worker on the ground was also killed, making a total of 36 dead. Sam Shere’s photo became one of the most famous photographs ever taken.

21.

The vulture is waiting for the girl to die and to eat her. The photograph was taken by South African photojournalist, Kevin Carter, while on assignment to Sudan. He took his own life a couple of month later due to depression.

Kevin Carter. On 27 July 1994 Carter drove his way to Parkmore near the Field and Study Center, an area where he used to play as a child, and committed suicide by taping one end of a hose to his pickup truck’s exhaust pipe and running the other end to the driver’s side window. He died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 33. Portions of Carter’s suicide note read: “I’m really, really sorry. The pain of life overrides the joy to the point that joy does not exist… depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings and corpses and anger and pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners … I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”[6]

22.

Mustafa Kemal, the founder of Turkish Republic listening to a citizen during the efforts to rebuild the country after the Turkish Liberation War, which a nation defeated imperialist countries for the first time in history. This iconic photo shows his leadership skills and sensibility to his people.

23.

On Einstein’s 72nd birthday on March 14, 1951, UPI photographer Arthur Sasse was trying to persuade him to smile for the camera, but having smiled for photographers many times that day, Einstein stuck out his tongue instead.[1]

 24.

Life magazine photograph taken 70 years ago today during celebrations marking V-J Day, the end of World War II. It’s a defining image of a turbulent time: a sailor kissing a nurse in New York’s Times Square. The V-J Day kiss was captured at the same time by two different photographers: Eisenstaedt and Navy photographer Victor Jorgensen, whose version is lesser known. World War II veteran George Mendonsa, of Rhode Island, claims he’s the sailor in the iconic 1945 Life Magazine photo of a couple smooching in Time Square. One nurse kissed on V-J Day was actually a dental assistant named Greta Friedman, who saw the iconic photo for the first time in the 1960s. She remembered walking across town to Times Square after hearing rumors about the war’s end. “Suddenly, I was grabbed by a sailor,” she said. “It wasn’t that much of a kiss. It was more of a jubilant act that he didn’t have to go back.”

George Mendosa and Greta Friedman

25.

The Mahatma, 1946 By Margaret Bourke-White “I feel that utter truth is essential,” Margaret Bourke-White once said of photography, “and to get that truth may take a lot of searching and long hours.” This approach to the craft is, it can be said, Gandhi-esque, so perhaps it is fitting that the Mahatma, who spent many long hours searching for answers, was one of her regular subjects in the 1940s. Here, the great man of peace is at his spinning wheel in Poona, India. source : Time

26.

A Romanian child hands a heart-shaped balloon to riot police during protests against austerity measures in Bucharest. oanamoldovan.com / Via theworldreporter.com.

27.

A Russian war veteran kneels beside the tank he spent the war in, now a monument.  Via englishrussia.com

28.

A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan. Known as the “Woman in Red” became a symbol of the protests who had been sprayed tear gas into her face.