This is part 2 of the compilation of Photographs That Changed The World. Photos from past to present that have touched humanity to it’s core. Any picture can speak 1,000 words, but only a select few say something poignant enough to galvanize an entire society. The following photographs screamed so loudly that the entire world stopped to take notice.
Photographs That Changed The World – Part 2 consist of: The Boston Fire, Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud, Tiananmen Square protests, Child Draws Home, 9/11 Attacks, Oklahoma City bombing, Niagara falls frozen, Starving boy and missionary, Segregated water fountains, Flower Power, Face off – Oka Crisis and Flag raising on Iwo Jima.
Some of this pictures are quite disturbing. It permeates the harsh realities of life. Emotionally disturbing. You have been warned.
You can view Part 1 HERE.
Hit the jump (More) to view Part 2
The Boston Fire
On July 22, 1975, Stanley J. Forman was working in the newsroom of the Boston Herald American newspaper when a police scanner picked up an emergency: “Fire on Marlborough Street!” Forman rushed to the scene, where multiple fire crews were battling an intense blaze. There was a distress call for a ladder team to the rear of the building to help a stranded woman and child. Forman followed.
Climbing atop the fire truck for a better view, Forman instinctively began covering the events before him. As firemen on the scene focused on their work, Forman’s attention was directed to a young woman, Diana Bryant, and a very young girl, Tiare Jones. Both were seeking help from fireman, Bob O’Neil, located on the roof directly above them. O’Neil moved to the fire escape and motioned for the truck’s ladder to be brought to them. The flames came closer and closer to the fire escape as Forman continued to shoot.
Then, at the very instant the ladder reached the trio, the fire escape gave way. O’Neil clung to the ladder, but Bryant and Jones fell helplessly. Forman snapped a last picture before turning away, knowing the bodies were falling to the ground. Diana Bryant was pronounced dead at the scene. The young girl lived. Despite a heroic effort, O’Neil knew he had been just seconds away from saving the lives of both. Forman’s work captured a vivid scene where mere seconds had meant life or death.
Photo coverage from the tragic event garnered Stanley Forman a Pulitzer Prize. But more important, his work paved the way for Boston and other states to mandate tougher fire safety codes.
Nagasaki Mushroom Cloud
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.
Tiananmen Square protests
Tiananmen Square 1989.
A hunger strike by 3,000 students in Beijing had grown to a protest of more than a million as the injustices of a nation cried for reform. For seven weeks the people and the People’s Republic, in the person of soldiers dispatched by a riven Communist Party, warily eyed each other as the world waited. When this young man simply would not move, standing with his meager bags before a line of tanks, a hero was born. A second hero emerged as the tank driver refused to crush the man, and instead drove his killing machine around him. Soon this dream would end, and blood would fill Tiananmen. But this picture had shown a billion Chinese that there is hope.
Child Draws Home
The effects of the World Wart II have not only resulted to the death of millions, but also a long-standing disturbance on the lives of those who survived, particularly children. They were the ones who greatly suffered from the pain and trauma brought by the war. They not only witnessed killings of their families and friends; they also lost their future. They may have survived the war, but the pain will forever be there.
Among those who suffered this effect is Teresa, a young Polish girl who lost her family during the war. While in staying in a concentration camp, she drew an unrecognizable image on the blackboard, which was somewhat chaotic. When ask what her drawing was, she pertained to it as her “home”.
9/11 Attacks
In the morning September 11, 2001, two hijacked passenger jets crashed into the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center in New York City. This was no accident, but rather a series of attacks done by suicide bombers engaged with the Al-Qaeda terrorist group.
The attacks killed all the passengers on board the hijacked planes, and took away 2,974 innocent lives at the World Trade Center. More than 90 countries lost citizens in the attack, and the stock market was closed for a week. In response to the attacks, the United States government declared a War on Terror, while many other nations strengthened their law enforcement powers to fight terrorism. However, the suicide attacks done by the Al Qaeda terrorists have forever marked a sense of fear not just in America, but in the whole world.
Oklahoma City bombing
Oklahoma City firefighter Chris Fields carries a dying Baylee Almon away from the rubble. She had celebrated her first birthday just one day earlier.
Charles Porter’s photo was widely distributed by The Daily Oklahoman and the Associated Press and quickly became recognized around the world.
The photo earned the 1996 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography.
Niagara falls frozen
This is a rare image which was purportedly taken in 1911 offer postcard views of Niagara Falls completely frozen over. It circulated by email from aprox. 2003.
The flow of water was stopped completely over both falls on March 29th 1848 due to an ice jam in the upper river for several hours. This is the only known time to have occurred. The Falls did not actually freeze over, but the flow was stopped to the point where people actually walked out and recovered artifacts from the riverbed!
Niagara had frozen again in 1936.
Starving boy and a missionary
World Press Photo of the Year: 1980 Mike Wells, United Kingdom. Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. Starving boy and a missionary. About the image Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes with pictures of people starving to death.
Segregated water fountains
Picture of segregated water fountains in North Carolina taken by Elliott Erwitt.
Flower Power
The most lasting image from the last big march on the Pentagon, on October 21, 1967, survives in the collective memory as summing up an era. Carnations in gun barrels were the essence of Flower Power. “I knew I had a good picture,” says photographer Bernie Boston, 73, who took the photo for the Washington Star. His editors, not imagining the significance, buried it deep inside the A section.
What became of the young demonstrator? By most accounts, he was George Harris, about 18 years old, a young actor from New York. He was on his way to San Francisco, where he would come out of the closet, take the name Hibiscus, and co-found the flamboyant, psychedelic gay-themed drag troupe called the Cockettes, according to filmmaker David Weissman, who made a critically acclaimed documentary of the group in 2002. Harris died in the early 1980s of complications from AIDS, at the dawn of that epidemic.
Face off: Oka Crisis
The Oka Crisis was one of the well-publicized violent conflicts the Canadian government faced against the First nations that began on July 11, 1990 and lasted until September 26, 1990. The immediate cause of the conflict was due to a land dispute between the Mohawk nation and the town of Oka, Quebec, which resulted to one direct and two indirect casualties.
How important is the land you stand on? For some, a piece of land means a highly profitable investment, but for the Mohawk Nation, their land is not just a piece of soil, but a legacy passed to them by their ancestors. And this was something they had to fight for even it had to cost their lives. During the conflict, Mohawk Warriors set up barricades around the town of Oka, and a series of confrontations between the Mohawk Nation and the Sûretè de Quebec that often led to violent face offs.
The Oka Crisis ended on September 26, 1990, almost a month after the Mohawk Warriors negotiated an end to their protest. The proposed expansion of the golf course was eventually cancelled.
Flag raising on Iwo Jima
Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima is a 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.
The photograph was extremely popular, being reprinted in thousands of publications. Later, 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.
Of the six men depicted in the picture, three (Franklin Sousley, Harlon Block, and Michael Strank) did not survive the battle; the three survivors (John Bradley, Rene Gagnon, and Ira Hayes) became celebrities upon their identification in the photo. The picture was later used by Felix de Weldon to sculpt the USMC War Memorial, located adjacent to Arlington National Cemetery just outside Washington, D.C.
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