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.Racial segregation is the separation of different racial groups in daily life activities, such as eating in a restaurant, drinking from a water fountain, using a washroom, attending school, going to the movies, or purchasing a home. The United States was highly segregated until a series of Supreme Court decisions changed national regulations, beginning with Brown vs. Board of Education in 1954.
Images allow our interpretation which is both their great strength and their great weakness. An image doesn’t tell you what to think when presented to you (although of course, we very rarely if ever see images in isolation from text or sound). This removes some amount of spin and bias. However, photographs are not neutral either. The angle, lighting, choice of subject etc all impact hugely on the way that image is likely to be interpreted and so the photographer does control your interpretation to a large extent.
The collection of photographs presented here did not include photographs of torture in Iraq under Saddam, deplorable conditions in the Gulags of the Soviet Union, living conditions in North Korea, or the dark side of Cuba. While the photographs selected were truly moving, one must at least ponder why it was that images of genocide in Cambodia and of Chinese civil rights abuses were not in the collection. We tend to forget that we see far more photos of Western, free-world problems which unfortunately distorts our perspective.
The Photograph That Gave a Face to the Great Depression
“Migrant Mother”
Dorothea Lange, 1936
As era-defining photographs go, “Migrant Mother” pretty much takes the cake. For many, Florence Owens Thompson is the face of the Great Depression, thanks to legendary shutterbug Dorothea Lange. Lange captured the image while visiting a dusty California pea-pickers’ camp in February 1936, and in doing so, captured the resilience of a proud nation facing desperate times.
Unbelievably, Thompson’s story is as compelling as her portrait. Just 32 years old when Lange approached her (“as if drawn by a magnet,” Lange said). Thompson was a mother of seven who’d lost her husband to tuberculosis.
Stranded at a migratory labor farm in Nipomo, Calif. her family sustained themselves on birds killed by her kids and vegetables taken from a nearby field – as meager a living as any earned by the other 2,500 workers there. The photo’s impact was staggering. Reproduced in newspapers everywhere, Thompson’s haunted face triggered an immediate public outcry, quickly prompting politicos from the federal Resettlement Administration to send food and supplies. Sadly, however, Thompson and her family had already moved on, receiving nary a wedge of government cheese for their high-profile misery.
In fact, no one knew the identity of the photographed woman until Thompson revealed herself years later in a 1976 newspaper article.
The Photograph That Isn’t as Romantic as You Might Think
“V-J Day, Times Square, 1945″, a.k.a. “The Kiss”
Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945
On August 14, 1945, the news of Japan’s surrender was announced in the United States, signaling the end of World War II. Riotous celebrations erupted in the streets, but perhaps none were more relieved than those in uniform. Although many of them had recently returned from victory in
Europe, they faced the prospect of having to ship out yet again, this time to the bloody Pacific.
Among the overjoyed masses gathered in Times Square that day was one of the most talented photojournalists of the 20th century, a German immigrant named Alfred Eisenstaedt. While snapping pictures of the celebration, he spotted a sailor “running along the street grabbing any and every girl in sight.” He later explained that, “whether she was a grandmother, stout, thin, old, didn’t make any difference.”
Of course, a photo of the sailor planting a wet one on a senior citizen wouldn’t have made the cover of Life, but when he locked lips with an attractive nurse, the image was circulated in newspapers across the country. Needless to say, “V-J Day” didn’t capture a highly anticipated embrace by long-lost lovers, but it also wasn’t staged, as many critics have claimed. In any case, the image remains an enduring symbol of America’s exuberance at the end of a long struggle.
The Atomic Bomb
August 9, 1945
The picture was taken from one of the B-29 Superfortresses used in the attack on Nagasaki. The Fat Man mushroom cloud resulting from the nuclear explosion rises 18 km from the point of impact.
Over 50 million people died in the Second World war, but, the atomic bomb left humanity fearing the next world war could be utterly devastating.
From a single bomb, over 150,000 people died at Hiroshima and 80,000 in Nagasaki.
On 6 August 1945, the 393d Bombardment Squadron B-29 Enola Gay, piloted and commanded by Tibbets, lifted off from North Field at 02:45 Tinian time, with Parsons on board as weaponeer, and with the Little Boy weapon in its bomb bay. Hiroshima, an important army depot and port of embarkation, was the primary target of the mission, with Kokura and Nagasaki as alternative targets. With Farrell’s permission, Parsons completed the bomb assembly in the air to minimize the risks during takeoff. At 08:09 Tibbets started his bomb run and handed control over to his bombardier, Major Thomas Ferebee. The bomb was released from 31,600 feet (9,600 m) shortly after 09:15 and the aircraft made a 150° turn to maximize the distance between itself and the blast.
