Photos that shocked the world (34 photos)

Attention, not for the faint of heart

Photography, over the decades that it exists, has left and will leave an indelible mark on the soul of every person. Many photographers have achieved what no cinematographer has yet been able to achieve – this is to capture for eternal memory those fractions of seconds that shook and turned the world upside down, made you experience feelings, smile and even shudder at the very world in which you and I live.

Tragedies of the XX century - there are hundreds of them... Blood, pain and suffering – this is what revolutions, world wars, political upheavals and monstrous incidents have brought with them. And all of them, as a rule, are carefully photographed and recorded.

Baby in the womb



Take a closer look at this photo. This is one of the most remarkable photos ever taken. The baby's tiny hand reached out from the mother's womb to squeeze the surgeon's finger. By the way, the child is 21 weeks from conception, the age when he can still be legally aborted. The tiny pen in the photo belongs to a child who was supposed to be born on December 28 last year. The photo was taken during an operation in America.

The first reaction is to shrink back in horror. It looks like a close-up of some terrible incident. And then you notice, in the very center of the photo, a tiny pen grabbing the surgeon's finger.

The child literally grasps at life. Therefore, it is one of the most remarkable photographs in medicine and a recording of one of the most extraordinary surgeries in the world. She shows a 21-week-old fetus in the womb, just before spinal surgery was required to save the baby from severe brain damage. The surgery was performed through a tiny incision in the mother's wall and is the youngest patient. At this stage, the mother can choose to have an abortion

Fall



The most famous photo that no one has seen," is how Associated Press photographer Richard Drew describes his image of one of the victims of the World Trade Center, who jumped out of a window to her own death on September 11

"On the day that has been captured on camera and film more than any other day in history," Tom Junod later wrote in Esquire, "the only taboo by common agreement was the picture of people jumping out of windows." Five years later, Richard Drew's "Falling Man" remains a horrific artifact of the day that should have changed everything, but didn't

Explosion in Vietnam

Photographer Nick Ut took a photo of a Vietnamese girl running away from an exploding napalm. It was this picture that made the whole world think about the Vietnam War.

A photo of a 9-year-old girl Kim Phuc on June 8, 1972 has forever gone down in history. Kim first saw the picture 14 months later at a hospital in Saigon, where she was being treated for horrific burns. Kim still remembers how she fled from her siblings on the day of the bombing, and can't forget the sound of the bombs falling. A soldier tried to help and poured water on her, not suspecting that this would make the burns even worse. Photographer Nick Ut helped the girl and took her to the hospital. At first, the photographer doubted whether to publish a photo of a naked girl, but then decided that the world should see this picture.

Later, the photo was called the best photo of the XX century. Nick Yut tried to keep Kim from becoming too popular, but in 1982, when she was studying at medical school, the Vietnamese government found her, and since then Kim's image has been used for propaganda purposes. "I was under constant control. I wanted to die, this photo haunted me," Kim says. Later, she managed to escape to Cuba to continue her education. There she met her future husband. Together they moved to Canada. Many years later, she finally realized that she couldn't get away from this photo, and decided to use it and her fame to fight for peace.

Buddhist monk



Malcolm Brown, a 30-year-old photographer (Associated Press) from New York City, received a phone call asking him to be at a certain intersection in Saigon the next morning, as something very important was about to happen. He went there with a reporter from the New York Times. Soon a car drove up, several Buddhist monks got out of it. Among them is Thich Quang Duc, who sat in the lotus position with a box of matches in his hands, while the others began to pour gasoline on him. Thich Quang Duc struck a match and turned into a living torch. Unlike the weeping crowd that saw him burning, he didn't make a sound or move. Thich Quang Duc wrote to the then head of the Vietnamese government asking him to stop the repression of Buddhists, stop detaining monks and give them the right to practice and spread their religion, but did not receive a response

Death of a boy



The death of the boy Al-Dura, filmed by a reporter from a French television station at the moment when he is shot by Israeli soldiers while in the hands of his father.

Al-Dura's portrait of the "shaheed" has circulated in stamps, books, songs, and posters. But Jewish activists in France, who have questioned the authenticity of the images, have been waging a stubborn campaign that has been going on for years, demanding that French television also reveal parts of the footage that were not broadcast, excerpts showing Palestinians practicing in a re-enactment of the shooting incident that allegedly killed al-Dura

Burial of an unknown child



On December 3, 1984, the Indian city of Bhopal suffered from the largest man-made disaster in the history of mankind. A giant toxic cloud released into the atmosphere by a U.S. pesticide plant blanketed the city, killing 3,000 people overnight and another 15,000 in the coming month. In total, more than 150,000 people were affected by the release of toxic waste, and this is not counting children born after 1984

Mouse with a human ear



Surgeon Jay Vacanti of Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston is working with microengineer Jeffrey Borenstein to develop a technique for growing artificial livers. In 1997, he managed to grow a human ear on the back of a mouse using cartilage cells.

The development of a technique that allows you to cultivate the liver is extremely relevant. In the UK alone, there are 100 people on the transplant waiting list, and according to the British Liver Trust, most patients die before they can get a transplant

Che Guevara



A picture taken by reporter Alberto Korda at a rally in 1960, in which Che Guevara is also visible between a palm tree and someone's nose, claims to be the most replicated photograph in history

Execution of Saddam Hussein



On December 30, the ex-president of this country, Saddam Hussein, was executed in Iraq. The Supreme Tribunal sentenced the former Iraqi leader to death by hanging. The sentence was carried out at 6 a.m. in the suburbs of Baghdad.

The execution took place shortly before morning prayers marking the beginning of the Muslim feast of sacrifice. It was filmed and now the national Iraqi television broadcasts this recording on all channels.

Representatives of the Iraqi authorities who were present at the time reported that Hussein behaved with dignity and did not ask for mercy. He declared that he was "glad to accept death from his enemies and become a martyr," and not vegetate in prison for the rest of his days

The Loch Ness Monster



Photo of the Loch Ness monster. Ian Wetherell 1934

Lunch of workers at a construction site



The photo was taken on September 29, 1932, on the 69th floor during the final months of Rockefeller Center construction

Torture of prisoners in Abu Ghraib prison



At the end of April 2004, CBS's 60 Minutes II program aired a story about the torture and abuse of prisoners at Abu Ghraib prison by a group of American soldiers. The story featured photographs that were published in The New Yorker a few days later. This became the most high-profile scandal around the presence of Americans in Iraq.

In early May 2004, the leadership of the US Armed Forces admitted that some of the methods of torture did not comply with the Geneva Conventions and announced their readiness to publicly apologize.

According to the testimony of a number of prisoners, American soldiers raped them, rode on them, and forced them to fish out food from the prison toilets. In particular, the prisoners said: "They forced us to walk on all fours, like dogs, and yapp. We had to bark like dogs, and if you didn't bark, they beat you in the face without any pity. After that, they left us in the cells, took away the mattresses, poured water on the floor and forced us to sleep in this slurry, without removing the hoods from our heads. And everyone was constantly taking pictures of it", "One American said that he would rape me. He drew a woman on my back and made me stand in a shameful position, holding my own scrotum in my hands."

12-year-old Afghan girl



The most famous photograph of Stephen McCurry, taken in a refugee camp on the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. Soviet helicopters destroyed the village of a young refugee, her entire family died, and before getting to the camp, the girl made a two-week journey in the mountains. After publication in June 1985, this photograph became a National Geographic icon. Since then, this image has been used everywhere - from tattoos to rugs, which turned the photo into one of the most replicated photos in the world

Fall



Stanley Forman/Boston Herald, USA. July 22, 1975, Boston. A child and a girl fall while trying to escape a fire

Atomic mushroom



Atomic mushroom over Nagasaki, author unknown

A girl draws a "house"



Poland - Teresa, a girl who grew up in a concentration camp, draws "home" on a blackboard. 1948. David Seymou

Terrorist 9/11



The terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001 (often referred to simply as 9/11) were a series of coordinated suicide bombings that took place in the United States of America. According to the official version, the responsibility for these attacks lies with the Islamist terrorist organization Al-Qaeda.

On the morning of that day, nineteen terrorists suspected of being linked to al-Qaeda divided into four groups and hijacked four passenger airliners. Each group had at least one member who had undergone initial flight training. The hijackers flew two of these aircraft into the World Trade Center towers, American Airlines Flight 11 into WTC Tower 1, and United Airlines Flight 175 into WTC Tower 2, causing both towers to collapse, causing severe damage to adjacent structures

Niagara Falls



Niagara Falls froze. Photo of 1911

Hungry Boy and Missionary



Mike Wells, United Kingdom. April 1980. Karamoja District, Uganda.

White & Colored



Photo by Elliott Erwitt, 1950

An officer shoots a prisoner



A photograph of an officer shooting a handcuffed prisoner in the head not only won a Pulitzer Prize in 1969, but also definitively changed the way Americans viewed what was happening in Vietnam. Despite the obviousness of the image, in fact, the photo is not as unambiguous as it seemed to ordinary Americans, who were filled with sympathy for the executed. The fact is that the man in handcuffs is a captain of the Viet Cong "revenge warriors", and on this day he and his henchmen shot many unarmed civilians. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, pictured in the photo on the left, has been haunted by his lifelong past: he was refused treatment in an Australian military hospital, faced a massive campaign calling for his immediate deportation after moving to the United States, and the restaurant he opened in Virginia was attacked by vandals every day. "We know who you are!" - this inscription haunted the army general all his life

Freezing Rain



Freezing rain... It sounds harmless enough, but nature often throws up unpleasant surprises. Freezing rain can form a thick crust of ice on any object, destroying even giant power line poles. Or they can create incredibly beautiful objects of art of natural origin

In the photo: the consequences of freezing rain in Switzerland

Father and son



Jean-Marc Bouju/AP, France.

March 31, 2003. An Najaf, Iraq. A man is trying to alleviate the harsh conditions of his son in a prisoner of war prison.

Snowman



The Patterson-Gimlin documentary, which captured a female Bigfoot, the American "Bigfoot" in 1967, is still the only clear photographic evidence of the existence on earth of living relict hominids, designated in hominology by the term "homins". At the same time, there are a fair number of fuzzy, blurry images that are not suitable for scientific analysis. This is a testament to how difficult these primates are to photograph. As a rule, meetings with them occur at dusk and unexpectedly, so that the shocked eyewitness at the most crucial moment usually forgets not only about the presence of a photo or video camera, but even about the weapon

Soldier in the face of death



Republican soldier Federico Borel Garcia is depicted in the face of death. The picture caused a huge shock in society. The situation is absolutely unique. The photographer took only one picture during the entire attack, while he took it at random, without looking through the viewfinder, he did not look in the direction of the "model" at all. And this is one of the best, one of his most famous photographs. It was thanks to this picture that the newspapers called 25-year-old Robert Capa "The Greatest War Photographer in the World" in 1938

The boy returns to Grozny



Lucian Perkins/The Washington Post, USA.

May 1995. Chechnya.

A young boy looks out of a bus loaded with refugees who have fled from the epicenter of the war between Chechen separatists and Russians, near Shali, Chechnya. The bus returns to Grozny.

Sailor kissing the nurse



Alfred Eisenstaedt (1898-1995), a photographer working for Life magazine, walked around the square photographing people kissing. Later, he recalled that he noticed a sailor who "ran around the square and kissed indiscriminately all the women in a row: young and old, fat and thin. I watched, but there was no desire to take a picture. Suddenly he grabbed something white. I barely had time to raise the camera and take a picture of him kissing the nurse."

For millions of Americans, this photograph, which Eisenstaedt called "Unconditional Surrender," became a symbol of the end of World War II

The Human Embryo



Nilsson gained international fame in 1965, when LIFE magazine published 16 pages of photographs of a human embryo. These photographs were immediately reproduced also in Stern, Paris Match, The Sunday Times and other magazines. In the same year, Nilsson's book of photographs A Child is Born was published, the eight million copies of which sold out in the first few days. This book has gone through several reprints and is still one of the best-selling picture books in the history of this kind of album. Nilsson managed to obtain photographs of the human embryo as early as 1957, but they were not yet spectacular enough to be shown to the general public

Banner of Victory over the Reichstag



A photograph depicting the hoisting of the Victory Banner over the Reichstag flew around the world. Yevgeny Khaldey, 1945

A woman confronts the Israel Police



A settler resists an Israeli army officer at the Amona outpost, West Bank, on February 1, 2006.

A Jewish settler confronts Israeli police as they invoke the Supreme Court's decision to dismantle nine houses at an outpost in the settlement of Amona, West Bank, on February 1. Residents, joined by thousands of other protesters, erected barbed wire barriers to protect their homes and clashed with police. More than 200 people were injured, including 80 police officers. After hours of confrontation, the settlers were chased away and the bulldozers began demolishing

Famine in Sudan



By the early summer of 1994, Kevin Carter (1960-1994) was at the height of his fame. He had just won the Pulitzer Prize, and job offers from famous magazines poured in one after another. "Everyone congratulates me," he wrote to his parents, "I can't wait to meet you and show you my trophy. This is the highest recognition of my work, which I did not even dare to dream of."

Kevin Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph "Famine in Sudan", taken in the early spring of 1993. On this day, Carter specially flew to Sudan to shoot scenes of famine in a small village. Tired of photographing people who died of hunger, he went out of the village into a field overgrown with small shrubs and suddenly heard a quiet cry. Looking around, he saw a little girl lying on the ground, apparently dying of hunger. He wanted to take a picture of her, but suddenly a vulture landed a few steps away. Very carefully, trying not to scare the bird, Kevin chose the best position and took a picture. After that, he waited another twenty minutes, hoping that the bird would spread its wings and give him a chance to get a better shot. But the cursed bird did not move, and in the end he spat and drove it away. In the meantime, the girl apparently gained strength and went—or rather, crawled—on. And Kevin sat down by the tree and cried. He suddenly had a terrible desire to hug his daughter...

Death of Omaira Sanchez



November 13, 1985. Eruption of the Nevado del Ruiz volcano - Colombia. The mountain snow melts, and a mass of mud, earth and water 50 meters thick literally wipes out everything in its path. The death toll exceeded 23,000 people. The disaster received a huge response around the world, thanks in part to a photograph of a little girl named Omaira Sanchez. She was trapped, neck-deep in slurry, her legs trapped in the concrete structure of the house. Rescuers tried to pump out the dirt and free the child, but in vain. The girl held out for three days, after which she became infected with several viruses at once. As journalist Cristina Echandia, who was nearby all this time, recalls, Omaira sang and communicated with others. She was scared and constantly thirsty, but she behaved very courageously. On the third night, she began to hallucinate.

A man maimed by the police



The Hutu man was maimed by the police, who suspected him of sympathizing with the Tutsi ethnic rebels. June 1994. Rwanda.