Iconic Photographs

An American soldier wears a hand lettered "War Is Hell" slogan on his helmet, Vietnam, 1965

And a good looking fella he was too x

I'm telling Ben!

Picture was taken by Major Clarence L. Benjamin at the instant a few of the train people saw the tanks and first realized they had been liberated. 1945.

A victim of a Colombian volcano disaster. Omayra Sanchez was trapped in water and concrete for three days. This photo was taken shortly before she died.
Omayra Sanchez, young victim of the Armero Tragedy in Colombia, 1985

Damn

her eyes!!

She was on her knees and the concrete roof of the house was across her calves. They would have had to amputate her legs to free her.

A father comforts his son, David Kirby, on his deathbed in Ohio, 1989. Widely considered the photo that changed the face of AIDS.

“Bloody Saturday” – An iconic photo of a crying baby amid the bombed-out ruins of Shanghai’s South Railway Station after a Japanese air strike against civilians. August 28, 1937.

What unsettles me about this photo is the fact the photographer found time to take a photo while a child is sitting crying in pain...

That must be a dilemma for war phitographers. Help the victims or take the photos that shiw the carnage to the outside world

I couldn't help myself, I'd go and pick the baby up...

Saigon execution: Murder of a Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief, 1968

Michael Collins, the astronaut who took this photo, is the only human, alive or dead that isn't in the frame of this picture, 1969

A Japanese boy standing at attention after having brought his dead younger brother to a cremation pyre, 1945

A lone man refusing to do the “Sieg Heil” salute at the launching of the Horst Wessel in Nazi Germany, 1936

Brave

Mcqueen wrote:Brave

His wife was Jewish, she was taken to a "camp". He was eventually sent to a penal battalion where he died in combat.

"The photo was taken at the launch of a German army vessel in 1936, during a ceremony that was attended by Adolf Hitler himself. Within the picture a lone man stood with arms crossed as hundreds of men and women around him held up their arms in salute and allegiance to the Nazi Party and its leader, Adolph Hitler. Everyone in attendance is showing their undying support for Der Fuhrer by throwing out their very best “Sieg Heil.” August Landmesser, grimacing with arms crossed, stood strong and defiant as he showed his disapproval by not displaying support for the Nazi Party. What made this photo and Landmesser’s defiance unique is that it represented the protest of one man, in its most sincere and pure form. The source of Landmesser’s protest, like many great tragedies, starts with a love story.

The story of August Landmesser’s anti-gesture begins, ironically enough, with the Nazi Party. Believing that having the right connections would help land him a job in the pulseless economy, Landmesser joined the Nazi Party in 1931. Little did he know that his heart would soon ruin any progress that his superficial political affiliation might have made. In 1934, Landmesser met Irma Eckler, a Jewish woman, and the two fell deeply in love. Their engagement a year later got him expelled from the party, and their marriage application was denied under the newly enacted racial Nuremberg Laws. They had a baby girl, Ingrid, in October of the same year, and two years later in 1937, the family made a failed attempt to flee to Denmark, where they were apprehended at the border. August was arrested and charged for “dishonoring the race” under Nazi racial law. He argued that neither he nor Eckler knew that she was fully Jewish, and was acquitted on 27 May 1938 for lack of evidence, with the warning that a repeat offense would result in a multi-year prison sentence.

The couple publicly continued their relationship and a month later August Landmesser would be arrested again and sentenced to hard labor for two years in a concentration camp. He would never see his beloved wife again. Eckler was detained by the Gestapo and held at the prison Fuhlsbüttel, where she gave birth to a second daughter Irene. Their children were initially taken to the city orphanage. Ingrid was later allowed to live with her maternal grandmother; Irene went to the home of foster parents in 1941. Later, after her grandmother’s death in 1953, Ingrid was also placed with foster parents. A few letters came from Irma Eckler until January 1942. It is believed that she was taken to the so-called Bernburg Euthanasia Centre in February 1942, where she was among the 14,000 killed. In the course of post-war documentation, in 1949 she was pronounced legally dead, with a date of 28 April 1942."

I don't remember ever meeting Adolf actually or god

This young crewman of a US Navy “Dumbo” PBY rescue mission has just jumped into the water of Rabaul Harbor to rescue a badly burned Marine pilot who was shot down while bombing the Japanese-held fortress of Rabaul. Since Japanese coastal defense guns were firing at the plane while it was in the water during take-off, this brave young man, after rescuing the pilot, manned his position as machine gunner without taking time to put on his clothes. A hero photographed right after he’d completed his heroic act. Naked.

Poser

Taken in 1967 by Rocco Morabito, this photo called “The Kiss of Life” shows a utility worker named J.D. Thompson giving mouth-to-mouth to co-worker Randall G. Champion after he went unconscious following contact with a low voltage line. They had been performing routine maintenance when Champion brushed one of the low voltage lines at the very top of the utility pole. His safety harness prevented a fall, and Thompson, who had been ascending below him, quickly reached him and performed mouth-to-mouth resuscitation. He was unable to perform CPR given the circumstances, but continued breathing into Champion’s lungs until he felt a slight pulse, then unbuckled his harness and descended with him on his shoulder. Thompson and another worker administered CPR on the ground, and Champion was moderately revived by the time paramedics arrived, eventually making a full recovery.