Some photographs become defining moments in history-they capture an entire movement,the mood of an entire people,or an entire nation at a burning fulcrum.sometimes these photographs transcend their immediate background and become universal messages.while that is magical in its own way,too often the intricate play of politics that led to the photo become simplified feel-good one-liners.
in this series i'll post some defining photographs-the first is the unforgettable scene from tiananmen square,china,1989,when students of beijing university demanded more political freedom from the government.an unknown student stopped a number of tanks singlehanded,by standing in their way before being butchered.156 students were killed,but not before they showed heroic courage in the face of death.china was condemned internationally for this act,and in its wake the political spectrum in china did attain a greater degree of freedom.
 

this famous photograph was from the height of american aggression in vietnam.long before there was hue and cry over saddam's chemical weapons,americans were daily dropping tons of napalm gas over vietnam's villages.thousands of people died from the most hideous burns.this particular photograph is of 9-year-old kim phuc,who is fleeing her village,her family burned to death,and she herself in pain.this caused a furore in western circles,and greatly accelerated the anti-war movements sweeping across america.it has survived as a classic in depicting the horrors of war-but,of course,the same western media which cries freely for kim phuc allowed war after murderous war to be unleashed.
kim phuc was rescued,and grew up as a peace activist.
 

1945-the end of the world war,and the three victors meet to share the world among themselves-churchill,roosevelt,and stalin.russia keeps eastern europe,america take the west.germany is divided,and the berlin wall comes up.
this historic photograph of the meeting that decided the fate of european societies for half a century looks hauntingly light-hearted.
 

john kennedy in berlin,june 26,1963.
this was the famous "ich bin ein berliner" speech,when president kennedy urged east germany to pull down the berlin wall.
"There are many people in the world who really don't understand, or say they don't, what is the great issue between the free world and the Communist world.Let them come to Berlin.There are some who say that communism is the wave of the future.Let them come to Berlin.And there are some who say, in Europe and elsewhere, we can work with the Communists.
Let them come to Berlin.I AM A BERLINER."
this was possibly the most famous speech of the cold war,ahead of churchill's famous "iron curtain" speeech.
 

Berlin wall series:
there were repeated attempts by east germans to cross the berlin wall into west germany,from building tunnels,to scaling the wall,to using ropes and even hot air balloons.the communist government banned the unauthorised sale of ropes and nylon,to prevent this.the tunnel that was dug went undetected for many years,until a woman stumbled across it,left her baby in her carriage then and there in the middle of night,and escaped.the discovery of the carriage there alerted the authorities.
perhaps the most famous incident was when peter fechter,18,tried to cross over on august 17,1962.he tripped,and lay bleeding for days on the barbed wire as both sides watched on.these photos shocked the world,and riots broke out on both sides of the city,as the berlin wall went into folklore.
 

his body being removed.
 

on november 10,1989,the first checkpoints were opened for people,as the berlin wall came down.the event was marked by celebrations all over east berlin,and performances by germany's greatest artists,including leonard bernstein,who conducted the 9th symphony on that day,near the wall.
within hours there was massive emigration from east berlin to west as families separated for 40 years came together.
 

mao zedong announces the beginning of communist china.october 1st,1949.
 

the death of john kennedy.perhaps the most famous video ever.
TIME MAGAZINE
In a split second a thousand things happened. The President's body slumped to the left; his right leg shot up over the car door ... There was a shocked, momentary stillness ... then ... a Secret Service man ... flung himself across the trunk, and in his anger and frustration pounded it repeatedly with his fist.
-Nov. 29, 1963
 

VIETNAM SERIES:
perhaps no war ever captured american political opinion like vietnam.as american atrocities mounted,bodies of american soldiers started coming home in thousands.from cinema to literature to art to photography,images of vietnam remain etched in the american psyche to this day.kubrick's "full metal jacket" to coppolla's "apocalypse now"(with its immortal scene of the texan general singing "i love the smell of napalm in the air" as his plane drops its morning's quota of poison over the countryside),hippies protesting and woodstock...vietnam defined american left thinking in the 60's and 70's.
about this next photo:
Eddie Adams changed America with his picture of Gen. Loan shooting a Viet Cong prisoner on February 1, 1968. The picture eventually overpowered the specific event and became the icon of a war that divided America. Its impact was partly due to timing. It came just after the Tet offensive when America was beginning to question its involvement in Vietnam.
 

many blacks refused to fight(saying "no vietcong ever called me a nigger"),most famously muhammad ali,who was imprisoned and stripped of his heavyweight title.
"No, I am not going 10,000 miles to help murder kill and burn other people to simply help continue the domination of white slavemasters over dark people the world over. This is the day and age when such evil injustice must come to an end."
-Muhammad Ali
 

this iconic photo of che guevara came to symbolise resistance throughout the 60's and 70's.almost impossibly handsome,very young,and a complete revolutionary,che guevara was the inspiration for millions of communist youths the world over,and spilled over to the west on magazine covers and t-shirts.
the history of the photo:
it was taken by alberto korda,a cuban photographer. It was while on an assignment for Revolucion in 1960 that Mr. Korda took the famous photo of Mr. Guevara at a protest rally after a Belgian freighter carrying arms to Cuba was blown up by counterrevolutionaries while being unloaded in Havana harbour, killing more than 100 dock workers.As he later recalled, it was a damp, cold day.
Using a 90-millimetre lens, he was panning his Leica across the figures on the dais when Mr. Guevara's face jumped into the viewfinder. The look in Che's eyes startled Mr. Korda so much that he instinctively lurched backward,and immediately pressed the button: There appears to be a mystery in those eyes, but in reality it is just blind rage at the deaths of the day before, and the grief for their families.
 

probably no single photo has captured an entire war more than the "dying soldier photo" by robert capa.it was during the spanish civil war in the early 30's,a war which brought together the very best of minds in protest against general franco.there was a mini-revolution in cultural history as neruda,hemingway,and almost every notable intellectual came forward with works that defined the time.
this photograph,which has become almost mythical in the history of military photography,is of a soldier,at the very moment when he had been shot.
 

deacember 21,1968 - the earth rising in a new day-from apollo8,precursor of apollo11 that finally landed on the moon a few months later.
Heralded as one of the Greatest Photos of the 20th Century by several sources such as Time, Life, Sky and Telescope, and others, this picture was taken by William Anders on the Apollo 8 flight with a 270mm lens on a Hasselblad camera. It was made into a stamp and had a profound impact on all of mankind. It was the first time our planet was seen by man to rise above the horizon of another planet-the "earthrise".
Niel Armstrong was project commander at nasa for this launch,and he remained on earth-he was chosen to go on the next apollo flight-the rest is history.
 

A school picture in linz,1900,of an 11-year old boy,who seems to tower over his classmates-he is in a world of his own,arrogant,far-seeing.His only boyhood friend,August Kubizek,later recalled him as a shy, reticent young boy, yet able to burst into hysterical fits of anger towards those who disagreed with him.
This is one of Hitler's earliest photos,and yet the steel grey eyes,the face set with savage and unrelenting conviction are already formed.
 

the sailor kissing the nurse picture.
the end of the world war in 1945 was marked by celebrations in america,and this famous photo was a result.it is perhaps the most famous picture of celebration ever.
the photographer alfred eisenstaedt on the photo:
"I was assigned to times square. there were thousands of people milling around....Everybody was kissing each other, civilians, marines, people, soldiers and so on. and there was also a navy man running, grabbing anybody, you know, kissing. i ran ahead of him because i had leica cameras around my neck, focused from 10 feet to infinity. you had only to shoot; you don't have to fumble around. i ran ahead and looked back all the time. i didn't even know what was going on, until he grabbed something in white. and i stood there, and they kissed. and i snapped five times."
 

HIROSHIMA SERIES
on august 6th,1945,the first atomic bomb was dropped on hiroshima.
this photograph is of the pilot of the "enola gay",who dropped the bomb,one hour before takeoff.
 

the bomb has been dropped,and there is the trademark mushroom cloud.remember that this photo was taken several hours after the bombing,around 100km away,from the height of a typical airplane.that gives an idea of the magnitude of the cloud.
 

hiroshima before the bomb-aerial photo

 

hiroshima after the bomb.
 

From LIFE photographer Bernard Hoffman's account of what he saw September 3, 1945:
"We saw Hiroshima today - or what little is left of it. We were so shocked with what we saw that most of us felt like weeping.... we were so shocked and revolted by the new terrible form of destruction. Compared to Hiroshima, Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne, are practically untouched. What was formerly Japan's most modern, most westernized city, is now nothing more than a two foot layer of twisted tin and rubble. Couldn't do much with captions because there is nothing to caption."
 

while the japanese got the atomic bomb in 1945,they themselves had occupied china from 1937 on,and imposed the most brutal repression.in fact,had japan not bombed pearl harbor and dragged america into the war,it is possible that japan would have continued to hold china,and mao zedong may not have come to power.
about the photo:
In 1937 this picture of a bloodied baby crying among the wreckage of Shanghai's South Railway Station went across the world to an estimated 136 million people. Britain, France and the United States protested Japanese aggression, and the Japanese threatened the photographer's life. The picture remains powerful today, a symbol of war's insanity
 

The most famous national geographic photo ever-journalist steve mccurry shot this picture of a frightened afghan refugee girl pne cold damp morning at the pakistan border,1983.the russians had tried unsuccessfully to integrate afghanistan into the communist regime,then resorted to outright invasion.it was a horrible defeat for them,and greatly accelerated the fall of ussr.america pumped billions of dollars into the war effort,and helped create osama-bin-laden,who,equipped with american technology from the afghan experience,later struck the hand that fed him.
about the photo-The girl's piercing green eyes, shocked with hints of blue and fear, gave away her story. Soviet helicopters destroyed her village and family, forcing her to make a two-week trek out of the perilous mountains of Afghanistan.
"This portrait summed up for me the trauma and plight, and the whole situation of suddenly having to flee your home and end up in refugee camp, hundreds of miles away," McCurry says of the photo that became a National Geographic icon after it was published on the cover in June 1985.
she was lost to the world while she became an iconic image in the west-and was finally relocated in 2001,at the repeated urging of the public.she has grown up now,and lost the sharpness of her face-but her eyes still burn.
 

She was found again in March 2002.Her name is Sharbat Gula. She lives in a remote region of Afghanistan with her husband and three daughters. She wanted the people around the world who knew her face to know that she survived the refugee camp in Pakistan. She married and had four daughters, one of whom died in infancy. She lives in obscurity, according to the customs and traditions of her culture and religion.
A member of the Pashtun ethnic group in Afghanistan, Sharbat said she fared relatively well under Taliban rule, which, she feels, provided a measure of stability after the chaos and terror of the Soviet war.
 

Sepoy Mutiny, 1858
Indian Soldiers Being Executed by British Canons. The aftermath of India's First War of Independence, 1858