10
Photographs That Changed the World
Photography
can take us places, we’ve never been before, perhaps never dreamed of. There are
some photographs that will make you stop and think. These 10 photographs stopped
the world and people hold their breaths for a few seconds to take it all
in.
The
Photograph That Raised the Photojournalistic Stakes:
“Omaha Beach,
Normandy, France” Robert Capa, 1944
“If
your pictures aren’t good enough,” war photographer Robert Capa used to say,
“you aren’t close enough.” Words to die by, yes, but the man knew of what he
spoke. After all, his most memorable shots were taken on the morning of D-Day,
June 6, 1944, when he landed alongside the first waves of infantry at Omaha
Beach.
Caught under heavy fire, Capa dove for what little cover he could
find, then shot all the film in his camera, and got out – just barely. He
escaped with his life, but not much else. Of the four rolls of film Capa took of
the horrific D-Day battle, all but 11 exposures were ruined by an overeager lab
assistant, who melted the film in his rush to develop it. (He was trying to meet
the deadline for the next issue of Life magazine.)
In an ironic twist,
however, that same mistake gave the few surviving exposures their famously
surreal look (”slightly out of focus,” Life incorrectly explained upon printing
them). More than 50 years later, director Steven Spielberg would go to great
lengths to reproduce the look of that “error” for his harrowing D-Day landing
sequence in “Saving Private Ryan,” even stripping the coating from his camera
lenses to echo Capa’s notorious shots.
The
Photograph That Gave a Face to the Great Depression
“Migrant Mother”
Dorothea Lange, 1936
As
era-defining photographs go, “Migrant Mother” pretty much takes the cake. For
many, Florence Owens Thompson is the face of the Great Depression, thanks to
legendary educated and apprenticed photojournalist Dorothea Lange. Lange
captured the image while visiting a dusty California pea-pickers’ camp in
February 1936, and in doing so, captured the resilience of a proud nation facing
desperate times.
Unbelievably, Thompson’s story is as compelling as her
portrait. Just 32 years old when Lange approached her (”as if drawn by a
magnet,” Lange said). Thompson was a mother of seven who’d lost her husband to
tuberculosis. Stranded at a migratory labor farm in Nipomo, Calif. her family
sustained themselves on birds killed by her kids and vegetables taken from a
nearby field – as meager a living as any earned by the other 2,500 workers
there. The photo’s impact was staggering. Reproduced in newspapers everywhere,
Thompson’s haunted face triggered an immediate public outcry, quickly prompting
politicos from the federal Resettlement Administration to send food and
supplies. Sadly, however, Thompson and her family had already moved on,
receiving nary a wedge of government cheese for their high-profile misery. In
fact, no one knew the identity of the photographed woman until Thompson revealed
herself years later in a 1976 newspaper article.
The
Photograph That Brought the Battlefield Home
“Federal Dead on the
Field of Battle of First Day, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania” Mathew Brady, 1863
As
one of the world’s first war photographers, Mathew Brady didn’t start
out
having as action-packed a career as you might think. A successful
daguerreotypist and a distinguished gentleman, Brady was known for his portraits
of notable people such as Abraham Lincoln and Robert E. Lee. In other words, he
was hardly a photojournalist in the trenches.
In fact, Brady had
everything to lose by making a career move – his money, his business, and quite
possibly his life. Nevertheless, he decided to risk it all and follow the Union
Army into battle with his camera, saying, “A spirit in my feet said, ‘Go!’” And
go he did – at least until he got a good look at the pointy end of a Confederate
bayonet.
After narrowly escaping capture at the first Battle of Bull Run,
Brady’s chatty feet quieted down a bit, and he began sending assistants in his
place. In the span of only a few years, Brady and his team shot more than 7,000
photographs – an astounding number when you consider that developing a single
plate required a horse-drawn-wagon-full of cumbersome equipment and noxious
chemicals. Not exactly what you’d call “point-and-shoot.”
Tethered as he
was to his equine-powered darkroom and with film speeds being much slower then,
Brady produced war photos that are understandably light on the action and heavy
on the aftermath. Still, they mark the first time Americans were so immediately
confronted with the grim realities of the battlefield.
The
Photograph That Ended a War But Ruined a Life
“Murder of a Vietcong
by Saigon Police Chief” Eddie Adams, 1968
“Still
photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world,” AP photojournalist Eddie
Adams once wrote. A fitting quote for Adams, because his 1968 photograph of an
officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head at point-blank range not only
earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also went a long way toward souring
Americans’ attitudes about the Vietnam War.
For all the image’s political
impact, though, the situation wasn’t as black-and-white as it’s rendered. What
Adams’ photograph doesn’t reveal is that the man being shot was the captain of a
Vietcong “revenge squad” that had executed dozens of unarmed civilians earlier
the same day. Regardless, it instantly became an icon of the war’s savagery and
made the official pulling the trigger – General Nguyen Ngoc Loan – its iconic
villain.
Sadly, the photograph’s legacy would haunt Loan for the rest of
his life. Following the war, he was reviled where ever he went. After an
Australian VA hospital refused to treat him, he was transferred to the United
States, where he was met with a massive (though unsuccessful) campaign to deport
him. He eventually settled in Virginia and opened a restaurant but was forced to
close it down as soon as his past caught up with him. Vandals scrawled “we know
who you are” on his walls, and business dried up.
Adams felt so bad for
Loan that he apologized for having taken the photo at all, admitting, “The
general killed the Vietcong; I killed the general with my camera.”
The
Photograph That Isn’t as Romantic as You Might Think
“V-J Day, Times
Square, 1945″, a.k.a. “The Kiss”Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945
On
August 14, 1945, the news of Japan’s surrender was announced in the United
States, signaling the end of World War II. Riotous celebrations erupted in the
streets, but perhaps none were more relieved than those in uniform. Although
many of them had recently returned from victory in
Europe, they faced the
prospect of having to ship out yet again, this time to the bloody
Pacific.
Among the overjoyed masses gathered in Times Square that day was
one of the most talented photojournalists of the 20th century, a German
immigrant named Alfred Eisenstaedt. While snapping pictures of the celebration,
he spotted a sailor “running along the street grabbing any and every girl in
sight.” He later explained that, “whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin,
old, didn’t make any difference.”
Of course, a photo of the sailor
planting a wet one on a senior citizen wouldn’t have made the cover of Life, but
when he locked lips with an attractive nurse, the image was circulated in
newspapers across the country. Needless to say, “V-J Day” didn’t capture a
highly anticipated embrace by long-lost lovers, but it also wasn’t staged, as
many critics have claimed. In any case, the image remains an enduring symbol of
America’s exuberance at the end of a long struggle.
The
Photograph That Destroyed an Industry
“Hindenburg” Murray Becker,
1937
Forget
the Titanic, the Lusitania, and the comparatively unphotogenic accident at
Chernobyl. Thanks to the power of images, the explosion of the Hindenburg on May
6, 1937, claims the dubious honor of being the quintessential disaster of the
20th century.
In the grand scheme of things, however, the Hindenburg
wasn’t all that disastrous. Of the 97 people aboard, a surprising 62 survived.
(in fact, it wasn’t even the worst Zeppelin crash of the 20th century. Just four
years earlier, the U.S.S. Akron had crashed into the Atlantic killing more than
twice as many people.) But when calculating the epic status of a catastrophe,
terrifying photographs and quotable quotes (”Oh, the humanity!”) far outweigh
body counts.
Assembled as part of a massive PR campaign by the
Hindenburg’s parent company in Germany, no fewer than 22 photographers,
reporters, and newsreel cameramen were on the scene in Lakehurst, N.J. when the
airship went down. Worldwide publicity of the well-documented disaster shattered
the public’s faith in Zeppelins, which were, at the time, considered the safest
mode of air travel available.
During the 1920s and 1930s, Zeppelins had
operated regular flights, totting civilians back and forth between Germany and
the Americas. But all of that stopped in 1937. The incident effectively killed
the use of dirigibles as a commercially viable mode of passenger transport,
ending the golden age of the airship not with a whimper, but with a horrific
bang that was photographed and then syndicated around the globe.
The
Photograph That Saved the Planet
“The Tetons – Snake River” Ansel
Adams, 1942
Some
claim photography can be divided into two eras: Before Adams and After Adams. In
Times B.A., for instance, photography wasn’t widely considered an art form.
Rather, photographers attempted to make their pictures more “artistic” (i.e.,
more like paintings) by subjecting their exposures to all sorts of extreme
manipulations, from coating their lenses with petroleum jelly to scratching the
surfaces of their negatives with needles. Then came Ansel Adams, helping
shutterbugs everywhere get over their collective inferiority
complex.
Brashly declaring photography to be “a blazing poetry of the
real,” Adams eschewed manipulations, claiming they were simply derivative of
other art forms. Instead, he preached the value of “pure photography.” In an era
when handheld point-and-shoot cameras were quickly becoming the norm, Adams and
other landscape photographers clung to their bulky, old-fashioned large-format
cameras. Ultimately, Adams’ pictures turned photography into fine art. What’s
more, they shaped the way Americans thought of their nation’s wilderness and,
with that, how to preserve it.
Adams’ passion for the land wasn’t limited
to vistas he framed through the lens. In 1936, he accompanied his photos to
Washington to lobby for the preservation of the Kings Canyon area in California.
Sure enough, he was successful, and it was declared a national park.
The
Photograph That Kept Che Alive
“The Corpse of Che Guevara” Freddy
Alborta, 1967
Sociopathic
thug? Socialist luminary? Or as existentialist Jean-Paul Sartre called him, “the
most complete human being of our age”? Whatever you believe, there’s no denying
that Ernesto “Che” Guevara has become the patron saint of revolutionaries.
Undeniably, he is a man of mythical status – a reputation that persists less
because of how he lived than because of how he died.
Unenthused by his
efforts to incite revolution among the poor and oppressed in Bolivia, the
nation’s army (trained and equipped by the U.S. military and the CIA) captured
and executed Guevara in 1967. But before dumping his body in a secret grave,
they gathered around for a strategic photo op. They wanted to prove to the world
that Che was dead, in hopes that his political movement would die with him. in
fact, anticipating charges that the photo had been faked, Che’s thoughtful
captors amputated his hands and preserved them in formaldehyde.
But by
killing the man, Bolivian officials unwittingly birthed his legend. The photo,
which circulated around the world, bore a striking resemblance to Renaissance
paintings of Christ taken down from the cross. Even as Che’s killers preened and
gloated above him (the officer on the right seems to be inadvertently pointing
to a wound on Guevara’s body near where Christ’s final wound was inflicted),
Che’s eerily peaceful face was described as showing forgiveness. The photo’s
allegorical significance certainly wasn’t lost on the revolutionary protesters
of the era. They quickly adopted “Che lives!” as a slogan and rallying cry.
Thanks to this photograph, “the passion of the Che” ensured that he would live
on forever as a martyr for the socialist cause.
The
Photograph that Allowed Geniuses to Have a Sense of Humor
“Einstein
with his Tongue Out” Arthur Sasse, 1951
You
may appreciate this memorable portrait as much as the next fellow, but it’s
still fair to wonder: “Did it really change history?” Rest assured, we think it
did. While Einstein certainly changed history with his contributions to nuclear
physics and quantum mechanics, this photo changed the way history looked at
Einstein. By humanizing a man known chiefly for his brilliance, this image is
the reason Einstein’s name has become synonymous not only with “genius,” but
also with “wacky genius.”
So why the history-making tongue? It seems
Professor Einstein, hoping to enjoy his 72nd birthday in peace, was stuck on the
Princeton campus enduring incessant hounding by the press. Upon being prodded to
smile for the camera for what seemed like the millionth time, he gave
photographer Arthur Sasse a good look at his uvula instead. This being no
ordinary tongue, the resulting photo became an instant classic, thus ensuring
that the distinguished Nobel Prize-winner would be remembered as much for his
personality as for his brain.
The
Photograph That Made the Surreal Real
“Dalí Atomicus” Philippe
Halsman, 1948
Philippe
Halsman is quite possibly the only photographer to have made a career out of
taking portraits of people jumping. But he claimed the act of leaping revealed
his subjects’ true selves, and looking at his most famous jump, “Dalí Atomicus,”
it’s pretty hard to disagree.
The photograph is Halsman’s homage both to
the new atomic age (prompted by physicist’ then-recent announcement that all
matter hangs in a constant state of suspension) and to Dalí’s surrealist
masterpiece “Leda Atomica” (seen on the right, behind the cats, and unfinished
at the time). It took six hours, 28 jumps, and a roomful of assistants throwing
angry cats and buckets of water into the air to get the perfect
exposure.
But before settling on the “Atomicus” we know today, Halsman
rejected a number of other concepts for the shot. One was the idea of throwing
milk instead of water, but that was abandoned for fear that viewers, fresh from
the privations of World War II, would condemn it as a waste of milk. Another
involved exploding a cat in order to capture it “in suspension,” though that
arguably would have been a waste of cats.
Halsman’s methods were as
unique as they were effective. His celebrity “jump” portraits appeared on at
least seven Life magazine covers and helped usher in a new – and radically more
adventurous – era of portrait photography
