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 😥

jFK jr saluting at his Dad's funeral.

I remember going to see a press photography exhibition in about 2008 I think. There were plenty of horrifying things (as you can imagine) but the ones that have lingered and still regularly haunt me are the Brent Stirton shots of the murdered gorillas. I think two separate groups had been killed - not by poachers, but people who wanted the protected Virunga area for the charcoal industry, apparently., The images were of the rangers (who were there to protect the gorillas) carrying the bodies away to a burial site on “stretchers” they made from saplings. Surreal and horrific. It showed the absolute dichotomy of humanity, the evil of the people who killed them, and the grief of the rangers who were so devastated.

I've never seen a photo of Aberfan wow that really is striking

Shani Louk, Hersh Goldberg, Naama Levy, Noa Argamani

Grenfell

It's a personal one but the image of the bus after a suicide bomber detonated his bomb on 7/7. I was on one of the tube trains which was targeted and getting home to see the picture of the bus was just awful.

It might not be as history defining as others on this thread but it always reminds me of both how cruel and how compassionate people can be; the bomber on the bus and the staff in the nearby buildings who immediately came to the aid of the wounded.

The firefighter going up the stairs in the Twin Towers when all the civilians are going down. His number was glowing on his helmet from the flash. He survived apparently- his boss realised the tower was going to collapse and ordered them out, and his unit of 6 all got back down and out with very little time to spare.

@sanityisamyth How I wish I could unsee this. I cry now and I cried then for these poor defenceless Horses.

Tianamen square tank man

Oh god yes. Brave man. Bless him.

Also, the photos of WW2 camps with those emaciated people.

People can be so cruel. Sickening.

A lot of the more serious things have been covered so I present you with Wham! In China which was an amazing thing at the time

At the time I was shocked, but later cynical about it.
I thought, being British, that maybe the Americans will now think at last about the damage done by their "Irish Americans" funding the IRA.
But no. Blow up civilians in other countries - fine.
Give any consideration to their own foreign policies - nope...
Horribly, considering the carnage of the twin towers, I hoped it would make Americans be more engaged with the rest of the world.
They are still ignorant.

The abduction of Noa Argamani.

The class photo of the teacher and children who were murdered in Dunblane.

Journalists make a choice -- you choose to observe the historical moment as it unfolds, or you step out of your role and help the dying child. His photo would do more to bring awareness than if he had helped that one child. But it is a choice. He could have helped the child instead. Which choice would you have made? I went to journalism school and I would have chosen to help the child. I didn't become a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist though, obviously.

I was late for work that day and was watching the Challenger launch on tv as I got ready.
It felt like science fiction.
I remember, too, all their smiles as they boarded the spacecraft.

Colonial Belgian Congo: A Slave Father Gazing at His Daughter's Severed Hand and Foot, 1904

He hadn’t made his rubber quota for the day so the Belgian-appointed overseers had cut off his daughter’s hand and foot. Her name was Boali. She was five years old. Then they killed her. But they weren’t finished. Then they killed his wife too.

the man’s name is Nsala.

More about the photograph above from the Belgian Congo. There are many photographs of child amputees from the time.

“King Leopold II's rule was truly brutal. You weren't just punished for refusing to collect rubber- if you didn't meet your quota, your family could be murdered, but often your child would have a hand and/or foot amputated.

Not meeting those quotas was punishable by death, and the soldiers enforcing this law were asked to present the "rebel's" hands as proof of the killing. But munitions were costly, so the soldiers preferred to just cut the hands and stockpile the munitions. It came to a point where bags of human hands became sort of a currency for the Force Publique”

The "photograph" is a still from the 1988 Holocaust-themed miniseries War and Remembrance.

https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/jewish-mother-toddler-hug/

I think this shot is now iconic..

The Herald of Free Enterprise on its side just outside Zeebrugge harbour.

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The Hamas hostages

Princess Diana photo outside Taj Mahal.

Sadly it’s closed down but there was a fantastic museum in Washington, The News museum which displayed all Pulitzer Prize-winning photographs many of which people are mentioning here. Viewing them all together one after another blown up was harrowing.

Voyager's "pale blue dot".