The image of a defiant man stopping a column of Chinese Red Army tanks heading towards the 1989 Tiananmen Square massacre has become iconic. Two recently unearthed photos give greater context—the uncropped photo is frankly terrifying.
See also "40 of The Most Powerful Photographs Ever Taken"—and scroll down to comments for other contributions and suggestions.
[Hat tip Geek Press and Jason Erik Lundberg]
UPDATE: Video here of the massacre and the confrontation, when for one moment the honour of one billion people rested on the shoulders of one man. [Hat tip Riko S.]
6 comments:
I would've thought the photo of the young girl running from the napalm in Vietnam would've been there - or the one where that Vietcong dude gets executed . . more worthy than that pic showing those two decrepit old bean-flickers getting "married"
Watch the documentary "Tankman" on youtube if you get a chance. Covers the change in China, the pressure a greater measure of economic freedom has put the leadership under for political freedom, the part the uprising played in the increased economic freedom, and of course it focuses on trying to figure out exactly who this guy was. Fascinating.
That is not the un cropped photo.
Those are different photos.
Not any less powerful though.
This was videoed also: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t959SEpUaEw
Absolutely amazing.
Amazing to think that to this day the massacre is still effectively censored by the Chinese Government.
You might want to read this article from Columbia Univ. School of Journalism:
http://www.cjr.org/behind_the_news/the_myth_of_tiananmen.php
But the photo is taken on June 5th - the day after the students had left the square! And the tanks are leaving from the square going East - and probably out of the city. So he is actually stopping the tanks from leaving the square! This is total craziness!
Post a Comment