This picture was shot by Eddie Adams who won the Pulitzer
prize with it. The picture shows Nguyen Ngoc Loan, South Vietnam's national police chief executing a prisoner who was said
to be a Viet Cong captain. Once again the public opinion was turned against the war.
By Eddie Adams
The lynching of young blacks [1930]
This is a famous picture, taken
in 1930, showing the young black men accused of raping a Caucasian woman and killing her boyfriend, hanged by a mob of 10,000
white men. The mob took them by force from the county jail house. Another black man was left behind and ended up being saved
from lynching. Even if lynching photos were designed to boost white supremacy, the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds
ended up revolting many.
By Lawrence Beitler
Soweto Uprising [1976]
It was a picture that got the world's
attention: A frozen moment in time that showed 13-year-old Hector Peterson dying after being struck down by a policeman's
bullet.
By Sam Nzima
Hazel Bryant [1957]
It was the fourth school year since segregation
had been outlawed by the Supreme Court. Things were not going well, and some southerners accused the national press of distorting
matters. This picture, however, gave irrefutable testimony, as Elizabeth Eckford strides through a gantlet of white students,
including Hazel Bryant (mouth open the widest), on her way to Little Rock's Central High.
By Will Counts
Triangle Shirtwaist Company Fire [1911]
The Triangle Shirtwaist Company
always kept its doors locked to ensure that the young immigrant women stayed stooped over their machines and didn't steal
anything. When a fire broke out on Saturday, March 25, 1911, on the eighth floor of the New York City factory, the locks sealed
the workers' fate. In just 30 minutes, 146 were killed. Witnesses thought the owners were tossing their best fabric out the
windows to save it, then realized workers were jumping, sometimes after sharing a kiss (the scene can be viewed now as an
eerie precursor to the World Trade Center events of September, 11, 2001, only a mile and a half south). The Triangle disaster
spurred a national crusade for workplace safety.
Phan Th? Kim Phúc [1972]
Phan Th? Kim Phúc known as Kim Phuc (born 1963) was the subject
of a famous photo from the Vietnam war. The picture shows her at about age nine running naked after being severely burned
on her back by a napalm attack.
By Hu?nh Công Út
Kent State [1970]
The news that Richard Nixon was sending troops
to Cambodia caused a chain of protests in the U.S. colleges. At Kent State the protest seemed more violent, some students
even throwing rocks. In consequence, The Ohio National Guard was called to calm things down, but the events got out of hand
and they started shooting. Some of the victims were simply walking to school. The photo shows 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio
kneeling over the body of Jeffrey Miller who had been shot by the Ohio National Guard moments earlier.
By John Paul Filo
Tiananmen Square [1989]
This is the picture of a student/man going
to work who has just had enough. The days leading up to this event thousands of protesters and innocent by standers were killed
by their own government because the Chinese people wanted more rights. He tries to stop the tanks in Tiananmen Square by standing
in front of them and climbed on the tank and hitting the hatch and yelling, the tank driver didn't crush the man with the
bags as a group of unknown people came and dragged him away, we still don't know if the man is alive or dead as the Chinese
government executed many of the protesters involved. China is still controlled by a communist regime, but while there are
strong willed men like this the country still has hope.
There are two well know photos taken of the protester by
two different photojournalist, so I thought I would show both images and give both photographer credit for there work as many
people think that both images where taken by the same person.
By Stuart Franklin
By Jeff Widener
Thích Qu?ng --?c [1963]
Thích Qu?ng Ð?c was a Vietnamese Buddhist
monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon intersection on June 11, 1963. His act of self-immolation, which was repeated
by others, was witnessed by David Halberstam, a New York Times reporter, who wrote:
.. " I was to see
that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling
up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly.
Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take
notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think.... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his
outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him." ..
By Malcolm Browne
Portrait of Winston Churchill [1941]
This photograph was taken
by Yousuf Karsh, a Canadian photographer, when Winston Churchill came to Ottawa. The portrait of Churchill brought Karsh international
fame. It is claimed to be the most reproduced photographic portrait in history. It also appeared on the cover of Life magazine.
By Yousuf Karsh
Albert Einstein [1951]
Albert Einstein is probably one of the most
popular figures of all times. He is considered a genius because he created the Theory of Relativity, and so, challenged Newton's
laws, that were the basis of everything known in physics until the beginning of the 20th century. But, as a person, he was
considered a beatnik, and this picture, taken on March 14, 1951 proves that.
By Arthur Sasse
Nagasaki [1945]
This is the picture of the "mushroom cloud" showing
the enormous quantity of energy. The first atomic bomb was released on August 6 in Hiroshima (Japan) and killed about 80,000
people. On August 9 another bomb was released above Nagasaki. The effects of the second bomb were even more devastating -
150,000 people were killed or injured. But the powerful wind, the extremely high temperature and radiation caused enormous
long term damage.
Hiroshima, Three Weeks After the Bomb [1945]
Americans -- and everyone -- had heard of the bomb
that "leveled" Hiroshima, but what did that mean? When the aerial photography was published, that question was answered.
And here is a ground view of the destruction.
Dead on the Beach [1943]
Haunting photograph of a beach in Papua New Guinea on September 20,
1943, the magazine felt compelled to ask in an adjacent full-page editorial, "Why print this picture, anyway, of three American
boys dead upon an alien shore?" Among the reasons: "words are never enough . . .
By George Strock
Buchenwald [1945]
George Patton's troops when they liberated the
Buchenwald concentration camp. Forty-three thousand people had been murdered there. Patton was so outraged he ordered his
men to march German civilians through the camp so they could see with their own eyes what their nation had wrought.
Anne Frank [1941]
Six million Jews died in the Holocaust. For many throughout the world, one
teenage girl gave them a story and a face. She was Anne Frank, the adolescent who, according to her diary, retained her hope
and humanity as she hid with her family in an Amsterdam attic. In 1944 the Nazis, acting on a tip, arrested the Franks; Anne
and her sister died of typhus at Bergen-Belsen only a month before the camp was liberated. The world came to know her through
her words and through this ordinary portrait of a girl of 14. She stares with big eyes, wearing an enigmatic expression, gazing
at a future that the viewer knows will never come.
V-J Day, Times Square, [1945]
or "The Kiss", at the end of World War II, in US cities
everybody went to the streets to salute the end of combat. Friendship and unity were everywhere. This picture shows a sailor
kissing a young nurse in Times Square. The fact is he was kissing every girl he encountered and for that kiss, this particular
nurse slapped him.
By Alfred Eisenstaedt
Casualties of war [1991]
Image of a young US sergeant at the
moment he learns that the body bag next to him contains the body of his friend, killed by "friendly fire".
The
widely published photo became an iconic image of the 1991 Gulf war - a war in which media access was limited by Pentagon restrictions.
By David Turnley
The Falling Man [2001]
The powerful and controversial photograph
provoked feelings of anger, particularly in the United States, in the immediate aftermath of the September 11 attacks. The
photo ran only once in many American newspapers because they received critical and angry letters from readers who felt the
photo was exploitative, voyeuristic, and disrespectful of the dead. This led to the media's self-censorship of the photograph,
preferring instead to print photos of acts of heroism and sacrifice.
Drew commented about the varying reactions,
saying, "This is how it affected people's lives at that time, and I think that is why it's an important picture. I didn't
capture this person's death. I captured part of his life. This is what he decided to do, and I think I preserved that."9/11:
The Falling Man ends suggesting that this picture was not a matter of the identity behind the man, but how he symbolized the
events of 9/11.
U.S. Marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima [1945]
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 U.S. Navy corpsman raising
the flag of the United States atop Mount Suribachi during the Battle of Iwo Jima in World War II.
The photograph
was extremely popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications. Later, it became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer
Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and ultimately came to be regarded as one of the most significant
and recognizable images of the war, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all times.
By Joe Rosenthal
Lunch atop a Skyscraper [1932]
Lunch atop a Skyscraper (New York
Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam) is a famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets during construction of the
GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932.
The photograph depicts 11 men eating lunch, seated on a girder with
their feet dangling hundreds of feet above the New York City streets. Ebbets took the photo on September 29, 1932, and it
appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in its Sunday photo supplement on October 2. Taken on the 69th floor of the GE Building
during the last several months of construction, the photo Resting on a Girder shows the same workers napping on the beam.
Here's a rare image by the same photographer showing the workers sleeping on the crossbeam.
Migrant Mother [1936]
For many, this picture of Florence Owens Thompson (age 32) represents
the Great Depression. She was the mother of 7 and she struggled to survive with her kids catching birds and picking fruits.
Dorothea Lange took the picture after Florence sold her tent to buy food for her children. She made the first page of major
newspapers all over the country and changed people's conception about migrants.
By Dorothea Lange
Omayra Sánchez [1985]
Red Cross rescue workers had apparently repeatedly
appealed to the government for a pump to lower the water level and for other help to free the girl. Finally rescuers gave
up and spent their remaining time with her, comforting her and praying with her. She died of exposure after about 60 hours.
By Frank Fournier
A vulture watches a starving child [1993]
The prize-winning image:
A vulture watches a starving child in southern Sudan, March 1, 1993. Carter's winning photo shows a heart-breaking scene
of a starving child collapsed on the ground, struggling to get to a food center during a famine in the Sudan in 1993. In the
background, a vulture stalks the emaciated child.
Carter was part of a group of four fearless photojournalists
known as the "Bang Bang Club" who traveled throughout South Africa capturing the atrocities committed during apartheid.
Haunted by the horrific images from Sudan, Carter committed suicide in 1994 soon after receiving the award.
By Kevin Carter
Biafra [1969]
When the Igbos of eastern Nigeria declared themselves
independent in 1967, Nigeria blockaded their fledgling country-Biafra. In three years of war, more than one million people
died, mainly of hunger. In famine, children who lack protein often get the disease kwashiorkor, which causes their muscles
to waste away and their bellies to protrude. War photographer Don McCullin drew attention to the tragedy. "I was devastated
by the sight of 900 children living in one camp in utter squalor at the point of death," he said. "I lost all interest in
photographing soldiers in action." The world community intervened to help Biafra, and learned key lessons about dealing with
massive hunger exacerbated by war-a problem that still defies simple solutions.
By Don McCullin
Misery in Darfur [2004]
It's an image which depicts a depressed,
shoulders-down figure of a child in a cluster of what remains of her family.
The very weather-beaten arm of her
mother goes over her left shoulder and there are the very small weather-beaten hands of the child, who is about five or six,
clinging on to this one piece of security that she has, which is the weather-beaten hand of her mother.
The mother
is not in the image, she's in the background. But then slightly further in the background you see the other hands of her brothers
and sisters as they wait in this village.
By Marcus Bleasdale
Tragedy in Oklahoma [1995]
The fireman has taken the time to remove
his gloves before receiving this infant from the policeman.
Anyone who knows anything about firefighters know that
their gloves are very rough and abrasive and to remove these is like saying I want to make sure that I am as gentle and as
compassionate as I can be with this infant that I don't know is dead or alive.
The fireman is just cradling this
infant with the utmost compassion and caring.
He is looking down at her with this longing, almost to say with his
eyes: "It's going to be OK, if there's anything I can do I want to try to help you."
He doesn't know that she has
already passed away.
By Chris Porter
How Life Begins [1965]
In 1957 he began taking pictures with an endoscope,
an instrument that can see inside a body cavity, but when Lennart Nilsson presented the rewards of his work to LIFE's editors
several years later, they demanded that witnesses confirm that they were seeing what they thought they were seeing. Finally
convinced, they published a cover story in 1965 that went on for 16 pages, and it created a sensation. Then, and over the
intervening years, Nilsson's painstakingly made pictures informed how humanity feels about . . . well, humanity. They also
were appropriated for purposes that Nilsson never intended. Nearly as soon as the 1965 portfolio appeared in LIFE, images
from it were enlarged by right-to-life activists and pasted to placards.
By Lennart Nilsson
First Flight [1903]
December 17, 1903 was the day humanity spread
its wings and rose above the ground - for 12 seconds at first and by the end of the day for almost a minute - but it was a
major breakthrough. Orville and Wilbur Wright, two bicycle mechanics from Ohio, are the pioneers of aviations, and although
this first flight occurred so late in history, the ulterior development was exponential.
By John T. Daniels
Earthrise [1968]
The late adventure photographer Galen Rowell
called it "the most influential environmental photograph ever taken." Captured on Christmas Eve, 1968, near the end of one
of the most tumultuous years the U.S. had ever known, the Earthrise photograph inspired contemplation of our fragile existence
and our place in the cosmos. For years, Frank Borman and Bill Anders of the Apollo 8 mission each thought that he was the
one who took the picture. An investigation of two rolls of film seemed to prove Borman had taken an earlier, black-and-white
frame, and the iconic color photograph, which later graced a U.S. postage stamp and several book covers, was by Anders.
