5 iconic shots that reflect entire eras

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

Usually, when looking at these photos, few people think about the circumstances in which they were taken. But there is a whole story behind each picture. This review presents 5 photographs that have become a reflection of entire eras.

1. "Migrant mother"

In March 1936, photographer Dorothea Lange, while in a labor camp in Nipomo, California, took a photograph of a woman named Florence Owens Thompson, who was dubbed "Migrant Mother".

As the photographer herself wrote, the woman in the frame was a pea picker and the mother of 10 children. They ate only frozen vegetables and birds that her children caught. She only sold car tires to support her family. The distant gaze of the mother and the children in hiding became a vivid personification of the era of the Great Depression of the 1930s.

2. Che Guevara

Ernesto Che Guevara's photo has become the most replicated in the world. The portrait was taken by Cuban reporter Alberto Corda. It happened on March 5, 1960 at a memorial meeting. It was enough for Korda to make the shutter just three clicks. Other people and a palm tree are in the frame. The reporter cut off all this, and hung the portrait he liked in his home, where he spent the next seven years.

In 1967, the Italian publisher Giangiacomo Feltrinelli visited Corda and liked the portrait of the commandante. Several copies of the photograph were sent to Milan, where the publisher produced posters featuring Che Guevara. Young people chanted with pleasure: “Che is alive!”, And the picture was scattered all over the world.

3. Unconditional surrender

This iconic photograph was taken by Alfred Eisenstadt in Time Square on August 14, 1945, when President Harry Truman announced the end of the war with Japan by radio. People poured into the streets of the city, and the sailor Glenn McDuffy, in joy, kissed all the women he came across. It was then that the photographer captured the nurse in the arms of the sailor. The picture was named "Unconditional surrender".

4. "Message from Albert Einstein to humanity"

A snapshot of Albert Einstein with his tongue hanging out was taken on March 14, 1951 by Arthur Sasse on the day of the celebration of the scientist's 72th birthday. The photographer asked Einstein to smile, to which he stuck out his tongue. 9 photographs were printed from the negative. The scientist presented one of them to the journalist Howard Smith with a signature on the back: “You liked this gesture, because it is aimed at all of humanity. The civilian can afford to do what a diplomat would not dare. Your loyal and grateful listener A. Einstein."

A snapshot with these words was sold at auction in New Hampshire in 2002 for almost $ 75,000. The photo is also called "The message of Albert Einstein to humanity."

5. "Afghan Mona Lisa"

This Afghan girl became famous all over the world after her photo was published in 1985 on the cover of National Geographic magazine. Journalist Steve McCurry saw this 12-year-old girl in a Pakistani refugee camp during the Afghan war. The piercing gaze of the girl touched him to the depths of his soul, and the picture was given the name "Afghan Mona Lisa". 17 years later Steve McCurry tracked down that girl and identified her. Sharbat Gula's face changed the timing and burden of problems, but the gaze remained the same piercing.