Photos that Changed the World

[GameAnalyzer]

 

Starving Child Vulture

 

One photograph that has helped awaken the world about the effects of poverty in Africa is the one above showing a Sudanese child being stalked by a vulture nearby. It is quite obvious that the child was starving to death, while the vulture was patiently waiting for the toddler to die so he can have a good meal.

 

Nobody knows what happened to the child, who crawled his way to a United Nations food camp. Photographer Kevin Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for this shocking picture, but he eventually committed suicide three months after he took the shot.

 

 

 

Flower Power

 

The most lasting image from the last big march on the Pentagon, on October 21, 1967, survives in the collective memory as summing up an era. Carnations in gun barrels were the essence of Flower Power. “I knew I had a good picture,” says photographer Bernie Boston, 73, who took the photo for the Washington Star. His editors, not imagining the significance, buried it deep inside the A section.

 

What became of the young demonstrator? By most accounts, he was George Harris, about 18 years old, a young actor from New York. He was on his way to San Francisco, where he would come out of the closet, take the name Hibiscus, and co-found the flamboyant, psychedelic gay-themed drag troupe called the Cockettes, according to filmmaker David Weissman, who made a critically acclaimed documentary of the group in 2002. Harris died in the early 1980s of complications from AIDS, at the dawn of that epidemic.

 

 

 

Man mutilated Rwanda

 

World Press Photo of the Year: 1994 James Nachtwey, USA, Magnum Photos for Time. Rwanda, June 1994. Hutu man mutilated by the Hutu ‘Interahamwe’ militia, who suspected him of sympathizing with the Tutsi rebels. About the image Nachtwey says his specialty is dealing with ground level realities with a human dimension. He feels that people need photography to help them understand what’s going on in the world, and believes that pictures can have a great influence on shaping public opinion and mobilizing protest.

 

 

 

Reichstag flag

 

Soviet Union soldiers Raqymzhan Qoshqarbaev and Georgij Bulatov raising the flag on the roof of Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany in May, 1945.

 

 

 

Omaha Beach

 

Omaha Beach was the code name of one of the points where the Allies would land and invade France, which was then conquered by Germany during the World War II. The beach is located in the shores of Normandy, facing the English Channel.

 

The British troops invaded Omaha Beach on June 6, 1944, and waged an attack on the German forces in three bloody assaults. To land on the beach was a difficult task due to the rocky terrains of the area, but because of the joined powers of the Air Force and Navy, the Germans were defeated by end of the day, and the D-Day objectives were fulfilled.

 

 

 

The lynching of the young black men

 

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.

 

 

 

The First X-ray

 

In 1901 Wilhelm Konrad Roentgen was the first recipient of the Nobel Prize for Physics, and he truly deserves his place in history because his discovery revolutionized the medical world. A series of experiments helped him notice that barium platinocyanide emits a fluorescent glow. Combining his observation with a photographic plate and his wifes hand, he made the first X-ray photo, and thus, made it possible to look inside the human body without surgical intervention.

 

 

 

The Boston Fire

 

On July 22, 1975, Stanley J. Forman was working in the newsroom of the Boston Herald American newspaper when a police scanner picked up an emergency: “Fire on Marlborough Street!” Forman rushed to the scene, where multiple fire crews were battling an intense blaze. There was a distress call for a ladder team to the rear of the building to help a stranded woman and child. Forman followed.

 

Climbing atop the fire truck for a better view, Forman instinctively began covering the events before him. As firemen on the scene focused on their work, Forman’s attention was directed to a young woman, Diana Bryant, and a very young girl, Tiare Jones. Both were seeking help from fireman, Bob O’Neil, located on the roof directly above them. O’Neil moved to the fire escape and motioned for the truck’s ladder to be brought to them. The flames came closer and closer to the fire escape as Forman continued to shoot.

 

Then, at the very instant the ladder reached the trio, the fire escape gave way. O’Neil clung to the ladder, but Bryant and Jones fell helplessly. Forman snapped a last picture before turning away, knowing the bodies were falling to the ground. Diana Bryant was pronounced dead at the scene. The young girl lived. Despite a heroic effort, O’Neil knew he had been just seconds away from saving the lives of both. Forman’s work captured a vivid scene where mere seconds had meant life or death.

 

 

 

 

Man walks on the Moon

 

In one of the most famous photographs of the 20th Century, Apollo 11 astronaut Buzz Aldrin walks on the surface of the moon near the leg of the lunar module Eagle. Apollo 11 Commander Neil Armstrong took this photograph with a 70mm lunar surface camera. Armstrong and Aldrin explored the Sea of Tranquility for two and a half hours while crewmate Michael Collins orbited above in the command module Columbia.

 

As the world remembers the thrilling Apollo 11 mission 35 years later, NASA’s newVision calls for a return to the moon, followed by journeys of discovery to Mars and beyond.

 

 

 

Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud

 

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.

 

 

 

I Have A Dream

 

WASHINGTON, D.C.—At the climax of his “I Have A Dream” speech, Martin Luther King Jr. raises his arm on the steps of the Lincoln Memorial and calls out for deliverance with the electrifying words of an old Negro spiritual hymn, “Free at last! Free at last! Thank God Almighty, we are free at last!”, 1963.

 

 

 

 

Lunchtime atop a Skyscraper

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

Segregated water fountains

 

Racial segregation is the separation of different racial groups in daily life, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a rest room, attending school, going to the movies, or in the rental or purchase of a home.

 

 

 

 

The Power of One

 

Settler woman struggling with Israeli security officers at Amona outpost in the West Bank.

 

 

 

 

 

9/11 Attacks

 

In the morning September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. This was no accident, but rather a series of attacks done by suicide bombers engaged with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group.

 

The attacks killed all the passengers on board the hijacked planes, and took away 2,974 innocent lives at the World Trade Center. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attack, and the stock market was closed for a week. In response to the attacks, the United States government declared a War on Terror, while many other nations strengthened their law enforcement powers to fight terrorism. However, the suicide attacks done by the Al Qaeda terrorists have forever marked a sense of fear not just in America, but in the whole world.

 

 

 

 

The Baby Hand

 

The picture and its story have been circulated on the internet so often that some question whether they are authentic. They are.

 

Clancy describes the famous picture this way: “Samuel thrusts his tiny hand out of the surgical opening of his mother’s uterus. As the doctor lifts his hand, Samuel reacts to the touch and squeezes the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shakes the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. At that moment, I took this ‘Fetal Hand Grasp’ photo.”

 

In a story he wrote about the incident, Clancy added,

 

“As a doctor asked me what speed of film I was using, out of the corner of my eye I saw the uterus shake, but no one’s hands were near it. It was shaking from within. Suddenly, an entire arm thrust out of the opening, then pulled back until just a little hand was showing. The doctor reached over and lifted the hand, which reacted and squeezed the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shook the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. I took the picture! Wow! It happened so fast that the nurse standing next to me asked, ‘What happened?’ ‘The child reached out,’ I said. ‘Oh. They do that all the time,’ she responded.”

 

Clancy said the experience changed him from pro-choice to pro-life.

 

 

 

 

Afghan Girl

 

Who would forget these eyes that have seemed to reflect the harshness of the war? This is the famous photo of the Afghan girl taken by Steve McCurry of National Geographic. It is very rare for a man to see faces of Afghan girls mainly because they are well-covered, thus McCurry seized the opportunity when she showed her face for a few moments. Her photograph made it to the cover of the magazine later on.

 

This Afghan girl, whose identity was revealed in 1992 to be Sharbat Gula, is now married and mother of three girls. She and her family lives in Pushtun, an ethnic region in Afghanistan.

 

And of course the afghan girl, picture shot by National Geographic photographer Steve McCurry. Sharbat Gula was one of the students in an informal school within the refugee camp; McCurry, rarely given the opportunity to photograph Afghan women, seized the opportunity and captured her image. She was approximately 12 years old at the time. She made it on the cover of National Geographic next year, and her identity was discovered in 1992.

 

 

 

 

Anne frank

 

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.

 

 

 

Last Jew of Vinnitsa

 

Picture from an Einsatzgruppen soldier’s personal album, labelled on the back as “Last Jew of Vinnitsa, it shows a member of Einsatzgruppe D is just about to shoot a Jewish man kneeling before a filled mass grave in Vinnitsa, Ukraine, in 1941. All 28,000 Jews from Vinnitsa and its surrounding areas were massacred at the time.

 

 

 

Oklahoma City bombing

 

Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields carries a dying Baylee Almon

away from the rubble. She had celebrated her first birthday

just one day earlier.

 

 

 

Biafra

 

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.

 

 

 

Buchenwald camp

 

Buchenwald concentration camp (German: Konzentrationslager or 'KZ' Buchenwald) was a Nazi concentration camp established on the Ettersberg (Etter Mountain) near Weimar, Thuringia, Germany (at the time, Nazi Germany), in July 1937, and one of the largest and first camps on German soil.

 

 

 

Tiananmen Square 1989

 

A hunger strike by 3,000 students in Beijing had grown to a protest of more than a million as the injustices of a nation cried for reform. For seven weeks the people and the People’s Republic, in the person of soldiers dispatched by a riven Communist Party, warily eyed each other as the world waited. When this young man simply would not move, standing with his meager bags before a line of tanks, a hero was born. A second hero emerged as the tank driver refused to crush the man, and instead drove his killing machine around him. Soon this dream would end, and blood would fill Tiananmen. But this picture had shown a billion Chinese that there is hope.

 

 

 

 

Burning Monk

 

As a protest to the Diệm slow and unreliable reforms in Vietnam, the Buddhist monks have resorted to immolation, such as this Mahayana Buddhist monk, Thỉch Quảng Đức. Đức burned himself alive across the outskirts of Saigon, mainly because of the harshness done by the South Vietnam government to his fellow Buddhist monks.

 

Đức was re-cremated after he burned himself; his heart meanwhile remained in one piece, and because of this he was regarded as a Bodhisattva by the other Buddhist monks and followers. His act of self-immolation increased the pressure on the Diệm administration to implement their reform laws in South Vietnam.

 

 

 

Starving boy and a missionary

 

World Press Photo of the Year: 1980 Mike Wells, United Kingdom. Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. Starving boy and a missionary. About the image Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes with pictures of people starving to death.

 

 

 

Che Guevara

 

Photograph of Che Guevara was taken on March 5, 1960 by Alberto Korda at a funeral service for victims of the La Coubre explosion, it was published seven years later. Che Guevara was 31 at the time of the photo.

 

 

 

 

Conrad Schumann

 

On 15 August 1961 he found himself, aged 19, guarding the Berlin Wall, then in its third day of construction, at the corner of Ruppinerstraße and Bernauerstraße. At that stage of construction, the Berlin Wall was only a low barbed wire fence. As the people on the Western side shouted Komm rüber! (”come over”), Schumann jumped the barbed wire and was driven away at high speeds by a waiting West Berlin police car. Photographer Peter Leibing captured a photograph of his escape on film and it became a well-known image of the Cold War.

 

 

 

Dead on the Beach

 

When LIFE ran this stark, 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 . . . words do not exist to make us see, or know, or feel what it is like, what actually happens.” But there was more to it than that; LIFE was actually publishing in concert with government wishes. President Franklin D. Roosevelt was convinced that Americans had grown too complacent about the war, so he lifted the ban on images depicting U.S. casualties. Strock’s picture and others that followed in LIFE and elsewhere had the desired effect. The public, shocked by combat’s grim realities, was instilled with yet greater resolve to win the war.

 

 

 

Dragging Vietcong Soldier

 

This is a truly sad picture but unfortunately I don’t have much information about it. At the time the public saw it, it made quite a buzz, people realized how wrong the war is. The picture shows American trooper dragging the body of a vietcong soldier with their tank (or APC more exactly).

 

 

 

 

Child Draws Home

 

The effects of the World Wart II have not only resulted to the death of millions, but also a long-standing disturbance on the lives of those who survived, particularly children. They were the ones who greatly suffered from the pain and trauma brought by the war. They not only witnessed killings of their families and friends; they also lost their future. They may have survived the war, but the pain will forever be there.

 

Among those who suffered this effect is Teresa, a young Polish girl who lost her family during the war. While in staying in a concentration camp, she drew an unrecognizable image on the blackboard, which was somewhat chaotic. When ask what her drawing was, she pertained to it as her “home”.

 

 

 

Dying Soldier Hangs to Priest

 

Puerto Cabello naval base, Venezuela, 4 June 1962. A soldier who has been mortally wounded by a sniper clings onto navy chaplain Luis Padillo. About the image Braving the streets amid sniper fire, to offer last rites to the dying, the priest encountered a wounded soldier, who pulled himself up by clinging to the priest’s cassock, as bullets chewed up the concrete around them. Rondón Lovera, who had to lie flat to avoid getting shot, later said that he was unsure how he managed to take this picture.

 

 

 

Earthrise

 

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.

 

 

 

SWAT vs. Cuban Boy

 

US federal agents have seized six-year-old Cuban shipwreck survivor Elian Gonzalez in an early morning raid on the home of his relatives in Miami.

 

About 25 officers broke down the door of the house and re-emerged minutes later with Elian wrapped in a blanket.

 

They bundled the screaming boy into a vehicle and drove him away, as the crowd outside the house shouted protests.

 

Chaotic scenes followed as the officers retreated and pepper spray was used to keep back the crowd.

 

Elian was put on a plane and flown to Andrews Air force base outside Washington where he was reunited with his father for the first time in five months.

 

Elian has been at the center of a bitter custody battle between his Miami relatives and his father in Cuba since being shipwrecked off the Florida coast last November.

 

His mother, and 10 other people attempting to enter the US as illegal immigrants, drowned.

 

One of the fishermen who rescued Elian, Donato Dalrymple, was in the house when he was taken.

 

Mr Dalrymple said agents pointed guns at the family and shouted: “Give me the boy or I’ll shoot you!”

 

 

 

 

Execution of a Viet Cong

 

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.

 

 

 

Dorothy Counts First Black Student

 

World Press Photo of the Year: 1957 Douglas Martin, USA, The Associated Press. Charlotte, North Carolina, USA, 4 September 1957. Dorothy Counts, one of the first black students to enter the newly desegregated Harry Harding High School. About the image Reporters and photographers bore witness and recorded the violence that erupted when Dorothy Counts showed up for her first day at an all-white school. People threw rocks and screamed “Go back where you came from”. They got their way - after a string of abuses, Dorothy’s family withdrew her from the school after only four days.

 

 

 

First Flight

 

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 Alberto Santos-Dumont was the actual first flight this photo is more well known.

 

 

 

 

The First Photograph

 

Known as the World’s First Photograph but actually this is the earliest surviving photograph, c. 1826. It required an eight-hour exposure, which resulted in sunlight on both sides of the buildings.

 

It represents the view of the courtyard of Niépce’s house at Gras, France, taken from the window of his workroom. On the left side of the image is the pigeon-house (an upper loft in the Niépce family house), to the right of it is a pear-tree with a patch of sky showing through an opening in the branches. In the center of the image is the slanting roof of the barn; the long building behind it is the bake house, with chimney. On the right side of the image is another wing of the house.

 

 

 

 

Say thanks to Kidkree1 for posting it to the website

[supersim]

repped .

 

sad thing is most of them are on the horrifying side of man s actions .

[kunallkw]

no warning

[Pushy]

amazing

[LagWarriorZergey]

Speechless..

[killzone123]

repped xGameAnalyzeRx

[★ Kani ★]

Awesome pics.. There are many others epic ones which you missed one being..

 

 

 

 

 

[Pushy]

dude, that will be posted, somewhere 100 years down the line

[Sackboy]

Epic

[Bird Bird Bird]

Darfur pics are equally mortifying.

[GameAnalyzer]

Thanks all

[hope]

repped.some awesome and some horrifying pics(the vulture one).

[playstation]

I think i had posted these pics long time back...specially the vulture one....but everytime you see this....it kinda slaps every human out there....

[Sherry Jose]

Repped u dude ...

You missed another one bro, this picture changed me a lot personally ...

 

 

Twenty-five years ago an Afghan girl with green eyes haunted the cover of National Geographic. She became the iconic image of Afghanistan’s plight, a young refugee fleeing the war between the Soviet-backed communists and the American-backed mujahideen. Today the iconic image of Afghanistan is again a young woman—Bibi Aisha, whose husband slashed off her nose and ears as punishment for running away from him and his family. Aisha fled to escape beatings and other abuse.

 

For LifeBibi Aisha was 19 when I met her in Kabul’s Women for Afghan Women shelter in November 2009. Her husband beat her from the day she was married, at age 12. When he beat her so badly she thought she might die, she escaped to seek shelter.

 

Note: Photographer Jodi Bieber wins World Press Photo of the Year 2010 for her TIME magazine

[GameAnalyzer]

Kool Thanks Sherry. and Yea PS i agree.

[avkash]

every time i see that first pic I really want to kill the photographer

he thought it was more important to take the pic than to help the child, good that he committed suicide, he may have done it earlier though

[★ Kani ★]

Those pictures are sad

[playstation]

every time i see that first pic I really want to kill the photographer

he thought it was more important to take the pic than to help the child, good that he committed suicide, he may have done it earlier though

u can never say for sure bro.......there are many times when human see some horrible things and not react ....and when they realize it kinda start making them guilty and all.......and some times his profession or hobbies can take over his personal feeling and he kinda becomes what he does .....like being a professional photographer first thing it would come to his mind is okay this one is a picture to show the world...so he just took it...it kinda become his natural reaction you know......just today it came in newspaper that a pakistani soldier send condolences to a woman for killing his father in 1962 ...he wrote to her that it was just what his duty called him to do ....he ever mentioned it was not abt war and all it was just his duty that required him to do....same for that photographer.

[Buzz]

WOW I am so sad

[Nemo]

 

 

 

 

Execution of a Viet Cong

 

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.

 

 

 

 

 

 

this is actually a very sad picture, because its the guy who is being shot who is a real monster, who killed a bunch of policemen and their family and the guy shooting was harassed his entire life because of it. yes i am am avif cracked fan.