Most powerful images in history [content warning: distressing images]

[DebbieTheCat]

Marking 23 years since the collapse of the Twin Towers at the World Trade Centre in NYC.
This has some personal significance to us as now DH, then fiancé was due to fly out on the Friday before but couldn't due to not having the requisite number of months left on his passport by a matter of days...
Still feel queasy thinking about it 😥

9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc. On June 8, 1972, she was naked because she had been hit by napalm .
The press poured cold water on her as she was shouting " too hot"
I'll never forget this image... l was 14 years old and in high school learning about this.

The falling man photo is currently exhibited at Elton's collection at the v and a museum in London. It is such a perfect and utterly harrowing image

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/TheFallingg_Man

A mother breastfeeding her infant whilst fleeing the Kosovo war.

An amazing woman who has used her life wisely.

I was going to say this one together with the images that came out of the concentration camps when they were liberated. Not just the images of starving and dead people, but the huges piles of belongings. There are no words to describe the horror.

I remember watching this and having a guttural reaction.

'Saigon Execution is a 1968 photograph by Associated Press photojournalist Eddie Adams, taken during the Tet Offensive of the Vietnam War. It depicts South Vietnamese brigadier general Nguyễn Ngọc Loan shooting Viet Cong'

You can look it up if you want to, it still disturbs me.

The vulture and the starving Sudanese child - photo by Kevin Carter.

Tianamen square tank man
The girl in South America in the mud
The girl and the vulture
The national geographic image of the girl with piercing blue/green eyes
The self immolation of the Buddhist monk
Albert Einstein tongue out
Audrey Hepburn breakfast at Tiffanys
James Dean with his jacket
Steve Martin on the motorbike

So many nameless I wish I knew their names.

The first ever photograph of a human - a shoe shine boy on a street corner
Raising the flag on iwo jima
The Hindenburg crashing

Thanks for adding the sensitive content warning @Moier
I should have put TW on thread title.
Unfortunately so many of these will be related to horrific historical events.
Please could MNHQ amend?

The photographer commited suicide after as he couldn't handle the guilt of not being able to help the child 😢

This shocked me hugely at the time as I was a massive space nerd in the 80s and the Shuttle promised to change the face of human spaceflight. The Challenger explosion shattered that.
Almost as bad was later learning that a number of engineers tried really hard to stop the flight because they knew the risks were too high. But they were overruled by a bunch of middle managers more concerned with the politics of delaying the flight than listening to the people who raised the alarm.

The burning monk

The picture of a spontaneous human combustion and the foot in the slipper 😞

Why couldn't he help her? Genuine question

Him. It was a little boy (who survived) I've just found out. Journalists aren't allowed to interfere only observe. This picture wasn't the only reason for his suicide

I think the falling man too

Photo of Omarya Sanchez trapped in the mudwater by Frank Fournier.
Horrible story 🥲

The washed up toddler on the beach.

Omg I remember the slipper photo; has haunted me since I was a child.

More recently is Cynthia Weil's 9/11 footage as recorded from her apartment, especially the first six or so minutes.

Some very moving photos on here - and horrific too. The little Sudanese girl who is emaciated and very thin, with a vulture hovering around waiting for her to day, is making me feel like crying. How awful. 😢

Yes to the Falling Man. Harrowing.

Tanks In Tiananmen Square, also awful.

One that haunted me for a while was from the 2007 floods in the UK. A man called Michael Barnett got trapped in a storm drain, and you could only see his head poking out (as rescuers tried to get him out.) The floodwater covered him before they could do it, and they all had to watch him die.

I won't post the photo as it's quite horrible. You can see the fear and desperation etched on his face.

Earth Rise

Taken from Apollo 8.
Changes our perspective of Earth
'Earthrise': The photo that sparked an environmental movement - BBC Future

Feel like some of you would really enjoy the Fragile Beauty exhibition at the V&A. It includes documentary photography and some of the pictures mentioned on this thread.

www.vam.ac.uk/exhibitions/fragile-beauty-photographs-from-the-sir-elton-john-and-david-furnish-collection