Remember these?
Some of these photos when I saw it when I was young haunted me till today. I wanna share a few.
May these photos be a learning deterrent experience for everyone of what war, regime warlords, oppressive government, racial supremacy and the holocaust can drive people to do unspeakable acts
Kim Ph̼c РThe napalm girl [1972]
Photographer: Huynh Cong Ut (Associated Press)
Source: wikipedia.orgThe girl in the picture is Phan Thị Kim Phúc also known as Kim Phuc (born in 1963), a nine-year old running naked and severely burned on her back by a napalm atack.
Photographer Huynh Cong Ut, known by his colleagues as Nick, was working there as a photo journalist for Associated Press at the time and took a number of photographs of the villagers trying to escape the napalm. This one, epitomising the savagery and tragedy of the conflict, won him the coveted Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most published photos of the Vietnam war.
The boy is her older brother Tam who survived the attack but lost an eye. Ut (the photographer) poured water onto the young girl and took her and some of the other children to a hospital near Saigon where she spent fourteen months recovering from the horrific burns to her skin.
Later, the girl studied medicine and now she; a UNESCO member living in Canada.
Stricken child crawling towards a food camp [1994]
Photographer: Kevin Carter
Source: Wikipedia.orgThe photo is the “Pulitzer Prize” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine.
The picture depicts stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat him. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who
left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.
The last Jew in Vinnitsa [1941]
Photographer: Unknown
Source: USHMMPicture 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.
Burning Monk – The Self-Immolation [1963]
Photographer: Malcolm Browne
Source: wikipedia.orgJune 11, 1963, Thich Quang Duc, a Buddhist monk from Vietnam, burned himself to death at a busy intersection in downtown Saigon to bring attention to the repressive policies of the Catholic Diem regime that controlled the South Vietnamese government at the time.
Buddhist monks asked the regime to lift its ban on flying the traditional Buddhist flag, to grant Buddhism the same rights as Catholicism, to stop detaining Buddhists and to give Buddhist monks and nuns the right to practice and spread their religion.
While burning Thich Quang Duc never moved a muscle.
The Power of One [2007]
Photographer: Oded Balilty (Associated Press)
Source: www.photojournalism.orgThis picture won the Pulitzer Breaking News Photography 2007 award. Photo’s citation reads, “Awarded to Oded Balilty of The Associated Press for his powerful photograph of a lone Jewish woman defying Israeli security forces as they remove illegal settlers in the West Bank”
Tiananmen Square [1989]
Photographer: Stuart Franklin Magnum
Source: life.comThis is probably the most famous picture you know. This is the picture of a student who tries to stop the tanks in Tiananmen Square standing in front of them. The tank driver didn’t crush the man with the bags but shortly after, the square filled with blood. The photo showed the Chinese that there is hope. However, China is still controlled by a communist regime.
The lynching of young blacks [1930]
Photograph: Brettman/Corbis
Source: life.comThis is a famous picture, taken in 1930, showing tho young black men accused of raping a white girl, hanged by a mob of 10,000 white men. The mob took them by force from the county jailhouse.
Another black man was saved from lynching by the girl’s uncle who said he was innocent. Even if lynching photos were designed to boost white supremacy, the tortured bodies and grotesquely happy crowds ended up revolting many.
this song kept playing in my head while i scroll thru these photos..
‘heal the world..make it a better place..’
unfortunately, reality dun always match up.
ain’t that the truth
These are really powerful shots.. had a photography class discussion back then when we discussed these images.. It’s amazing how images can actually change a nation’s thoughts and all…
Just like The Flags of Our Fathers.. one image that gave so much hope to Americans…
Especially like the Power of One…
Great stuff Sha!
agreed! i read a documentary how that ‘eflags of our fathers’ photo helped to propel the importance of the war and thus more military support + money was directed to it after tha
also plenty of other significant photos out there
on a personal level, i use photos to express myself too
i remembered the 2nd pic very much… a very sad pic… i will be depressed too, if i took the pic…
i would have thought being a pro photographer they would be desensitized after so many shots. looks like they r not spared
a good entry, certainly. love these kinda entrie sha. a little sad nevertheless, but interesting.
we ‘share’ the ‘spoils’ of war
I saw the first pic from a book cover.. I read the book but everytime i had to face the book cover,i couldnt bring myself to see it again and again..so i returned the book..
The last Jew in Vinnitsa [1941] and The lynching of young blacks [1930] showed how cruel people are..and to think that those were in the past doesnt mean the same cruelness doesnt exist to day! so sad but a creative entry..
well we all make do … most of the time close our eyes to such grievances
we have to thank we’re in a environment that don’t harbor such torment, but we’re faced with our own issues nonetheless
people cry foul over spilled food/water at food camps at another place, we cry foul over the longs queues at raffles donut factory
A little effort from everyone and I think the world can be a better place in time to come.
Great entry!
yup, a little caring goes a long way
stuff like these make u question humanity sometimes… depressing…
True.. sometimes, one just need to learn back what history have depicted in order to try and prevent such occurrences from repeating again.
Of course, there is much to it than just simple talk.
aint that make life more ‘life’ .. comes with the good stuff, is the bad ones too
woah… yes yes.. we humans are inhumane.. but whose to blame?!
Sometimes we are far too great for our own good. Money, power and big guns are never a good combination..
after all.. we are only human yeah?
Do i sound contradictory no?!!!!
we’re all capable of greed and such monstrosity. no one starts out evil just like that
take a look at this link http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_prison_experiment
that is true that no one starts out evil, but it is still inside them, and whether one acts upon it then do we really know.. anybody is capable of doing anything.. no matter what the repurcussions may include..
Oh wow..My heart sank for some of the photos. Photojournalism has always been the idle type of photographs since i started photography few years back. It’s really a rare opportunity to be able to capture such moments. I tend to put myself in the picture, to feel what the surroundings are at that time everytime i look at these photos. Happy, because u get to share the photos which needs the attention of the world. An also sad, at that point of time looking at the situation. Especially the photo by Kevin Carter. These photos triggered me on how lucky actually we are now living in this safe country where our needs are sufficient. And still people are complaining much most of the time..Huuhuuu..
yes, truly sad and horrifying to be in that instance when the photos was taken
call ourselves lucky, yes indeed. theres no such thing as ‘having enough’ in singapore and elsewhere. we always trying to attain more, and more.
One small correction:
Kevin Carter did not commit suicide 3 months after the photo was published. 14 months after it was published, he won the Pulitzer Prize for the photo, and 2 months after that, he committed suicide.