# The Most Iconic Photographs Ever Taken



## PadawanBater (Jan 28, 2010)

Lawrence Beitler took this iconic photograph on August 7, 1930, showing the lynching of Thomas Shipp and Abram Smith. It sold thousands of copies, which Beitler stayed up for 10 days and nights printing them. It has become iconic over the years as it is one of the best and most recognisable images of lynchingwhich at the time was commonplace, but now serves only as a reminder of the pre-Civil Rights era. The photo shows a crowd that have turned out to view the lynching, and the audience a mixture of anger and fulfillment. The photo was so popular it has been the inspiration for many poems and songs down the years.







This photograph has become synonymous with The Battle of Gettysburg, which was the most bloody battle of the American Civil War. Photographer Timothy H. O&#8217;Sullivan documented and recorded the battlefield, and this picture became a sensation. For many, this was their first chance to see, first hand, the true extent of the Civil War. However, it was not until 40 years after the battle that the pictures were mass produced, as photo-engraving had not been established. The picture shows dead confederate soldiers on the battlefield, and has earned its place in history as an iconic photograph.







Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is an 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. It became the only photograph to win the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in the same year as its publication, and came to be regarded in the United States as one of the most significant and
recognizable images of the war, and possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time.






Alberto Korda&#8217;s well known photograph of Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara, titled &#8216;Guerrillero Heroico&#8217; or &#8216;Heroic Guerrilla&#8217; has become a symbol of the 20th centry. It shows Che, as he was known, at a memorial service for victims of the La Coubre explosion. The picture depicts the then-31 year-old&#8217;s stoic and character and now appear on T-shirts, tattoos, murials and walls all around the world. Despite being one of the most reproduced images in history, Korda, a lifelong Communist and supporter of the Cuban Revolution, claimed no payment for his picture. The rights of the picture are now disputed. Still, it remains one of the most iconic photographs of the 20th century.






Most of the iconic images of the 20th and 21st century have owned their photographers Pulitzer prizes for their work, and this image is no exception. Eddie Adams was famous for his portraits of celebrties and for being a prolific photojournalist, having been in 13 wars. However, possibly his most famous image is of the execution of Nguyen Van LÈm by Nguyen Ngoc Loan during the Vietnam War. Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the irreparable damage it did to Loan&#8217;s honor while he was alive.






Possibly the most talked-about, debated and controversial picture in history, the picture of the moon landing has been seen as a feat of human engineering at its best, and has been speculated as a hoax by contractors of the event. Those in doubt of the authenticity of the picture have come up with many suggestions as to why and how it might have been faked. However, none of the accusations have been proved correct and the debate continues in some circles. For many, though, it provides a sense of accomplishment and acheivement by the human race to send a man to the moon, which for years was considered an impossibility. The American flag also installs national pride in the US as the winners of the so-called &#8216;Space Race&#8217;, and their establishment as the world&#8217;s one remaining super power.






&#8220;The Falling Man&#8221; is a photograph taken by Richard Drew at 9:41:15 a.m., on September 11, 2001 of a man falling from the World Trade Center during the September 11 attacks in New York City. The man in the photohraph remains unknown. Many people find the image disturbing because it is a horrific image of what people had to resort to during the attacks. The picture is deceptive, however, as it suggest that man was falling straight down, however, this is just one of many photographs of his fall. It is evident from these other pictures that he tumbling out of control.






This photo of a naked and terrified young girl running towards Pulitzer prize-winning photographer Nick Ut has entered popular culture as a symbol of the horror of the Vietnam War. It was taken during the American bombing of the village of Trang Bang, Viet Nam. However there has been much controversy over the events depicted in the photo. It is suggested that American bombers had nothing to do with this event and that there have been many derogatory and misleading comments about the American troops in regard to this photo. Nevertheless, it is said that this photo ended the war in Vietnam and served as an icon for the peace movement that was prevelent in the 1970s.






On July 22, 1975, Stanley J. Forman took this infamous photograph while working for the Boston Herald. He climbed on the back of a fire truck as it raced towards a reported fire at Marlborough Street. Just as the crew had arrived at the scene, a young woman and small girl fell from an apartment above. The woman died instantly, but the young girl lived. This photo earned Forman a Pulitzer prize, and in addition, convinced Boston and several other cities to introduce more comprehensive fire safety laws.






Often considered the most iconic photograph in history, &#8216;tank man&#8217; or &#8216;the unknown rebel&#8217; shows an act of courage and defiance and earned the anonymous man widespread fame. It took place during the protests at Beijing&#8217;s Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, and has subsequently become a symbol of the end of the Cold War era, and one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century. Four people claim to have took photos of the event, but the most reproduced image, and the most famous was by Jeff Widener.






This example of emotive imagery is of child in Uganda holding hands with a missionary. The stark contrast between the two people serves as a reminder of the gulf in wealth between developed and developing countries. Mike Wells, the photographer, took this picture to show the extent of starvation in Africa. He took it for a magazine, and when they went 5 months without printing it, he decided to enter it into a competition. However, Wells has stated that he is against winning a compeition with a picture of a starving boy.






This shocking photo depicts a starving Sudanese child being stalked by a patient vulture. It is a horrific picture that gave people a true look at the dire condition in Sub-Saharan Africa. Kevin Carter, who took the photo, won a Pulitzer Prize for this work. Kevin then came under a lot of scrutiny for spending over 20 minutes setting up the photo instead of helping the child. Three months after taking the photo, he committed suicide.



Powerful stuff my friends...


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## donthatetaylor (Feb 10, 2010)

thank you for posting something so worth while. + rep.


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## RichiRich (Feb 10, 2010)

Can't believe this thread doesn't have more posts.

+Rep, great post.

-Rich


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## Ramen Shaman (Feb 12, 2010)

Stunning. Maybe I'm just baked, but those really hit me. Like, REALLY hard.


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## NotMyJob510 (Feb 23, 2010)

You got anymore? Great job on this post.

Edit// ive seen pretty much all of the photos but i like your comments too.


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## Nienna (Feb 26, 2010)

Crazy shit. Thank you so much for sharing. Photojournalism is, imo, an underappreciated art that has often helped start entire movements, often shocking the public about the truth behind real events.

Awesome post.


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## rollmeUPoneSCOTTY! (Feb 28, 2010)

well done patawanbater. thank you.


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## mindphuk (Mar 1, 2010)

You forgot one -
Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sets himself ablaze in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. 
Photographer Malcolm W. Browne received the World Press Photo of the Year in 1963


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## jaysizzle (Mar 1, 2010)

This is a cool ass thread bro. I'm into shit like that and that was a really rad lil post.


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## PadawanBater (Mar 1, 2010)

mindphuk said:


> You forgot one -
> Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc sets himself ablaze in protest against the persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government.
> Photographer Malcolm W. Browne received the World Press Photo of the Year in 1963


Dude, the first time I saw that in one of my history books at school I was shocked! Really makes you think about what it means to be committed. 

+rep, thanks for the contribution.


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## Malenki (Mar 1, 2010)

Good pics all together man


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## PadawanBater (Mar 2, 2010)




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## donthatetaylor (Mar 4, 2010)

i think some of these have been posted but what the hay.

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.

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

Thích Qua?ng ?u+'c [1963]






Thích Qua?ng Ðu+'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 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

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

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


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## Melo4MVP (Mar 4, 2010)

That Ali pic will always be in my top. Much more then a brutal KO.


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## macdadyabc (Mar 5, 2010)

kurt kobaine does NOT belong in this thread. sorry. all the other pictures are really moving, and just makes you wish for a better world. fuck america, and help the little man


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## crusty420 (Mar 22, 2010)

HOLY SHIT those are some intense pictures


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## neosapien (Mar 27, 2010)

Wow! Amazing pictures PB thanks for sharing! A picture says a thousand words.


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## klmmicro (Mar 27, 2010)

The pictures depicting iconic events definitely have power to me. I can only imagine being the photographer behind the lens in some of those moments...most have no idea what their pictures will do in the future.

Thank you for sharing!


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## moobyghost (Mar 27, 2010)

Great thread! Being a film buff, I hope you don't mind if i add some fictional yet iconic pictures.






This is what love was when I was a kid. I know better now, but still. I love this image. Could be the reason I wear a fedora today.






Stare in to the eyes and this photo will tell you everything you need to know.






Lust and desire with one simple clean picture.






Vengeance. Since this movie came out others have copied the now legendary scene where Oh Dasue (sp) Clears an entire hallway of thugs using just a hammer and fighting skills he taught himself after being locked up unjustly for 10 years.


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## JointDoctor (Apr 7, 2010)

Banksy





Banksy, screaming girl from said images





Banksy on the Israeli wall which separates Israel from Pakistan 

it may not be iconic but i believe its good post modern art none the less


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## yadayada (Apr 9, 2010)

Excellent pictures, challenging thread to view. Thanks.

Strange Fruit 

Lewis allen

Southern trees bear strange fruit,
Blood on the leaves and blood at the root,
Black bodies swinging in the southern breeze,
Strange fruit hanging from the poplar trees.

Pastoral scene of the gallant south,
The bulging eyes and the twisted mouth,
Scent of magnolias, sweet and fresh,
Then the sudden smell of burning flesh.

Here is fruit for the crows to pluck,
For the rain to gather, for the wind to suck,
For the sun to rot, for the trees to drop,
Here is a strange and bitter crop. ​


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## Padawanbater2 (Apr 13, 2010)

[youtube]y6MC4iXhT6I&playnext_from=TL&videos=BlmS3vywDVA[/youtube]

Nice additions guys! Any photo's that are instantly recognizable are suitable for this thread.


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## TPIMP (Apr 13, 2010)

awesome thread


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## iNVESTIGATE (Apr 14, 2010)

Is it just me or is there a general theme of injustice and just plain fucking horrifying bullshit.. lol 




only a couple that were actually not fear based


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## alloutofpaper (Nov 4, 2010)

No man i took that tank picture!!


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