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 😥

The utterly destroyed by grief faces of the Camerons leaving the hospital after the death of their son. Not a fan of their politics but the pain on their faces is haunting. Can't link, sorry.

Moier · Yesterday 19:47

9-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc. On June 8, 1972, she was naked because she had been hit by napalm .

I'd always assumed that she'd died and was delighted to read an interview with her, a couple of years ago.

I'd probably go for an early exercise in multiculturalism, the raising of the Hammer and Sickle flag on the Reichstag. The three soldiers were Kazakh, Chechen and Russian.

It was re-staged, because initially, nobody took a picture.

needingadviceandthoughts · Yesterday 21:34

9/11 brought a new evil to the world and because of that I would say the images from that day.

Really? How about 50,000 people tortured and murdered by Savak, at the behest of the CIA? For being journalists, left wing, union members, feminists...

Or the millions in Latin America and the Carribbean, similarly by America and their clients. Marine Colonel Smedley Butler resigned after serving in the Dole Wars, in which Carribbean islanders were used as forced labour, to supply America with cheap bananas.

They were brutalised and murdered. Butler said in his memoirs that he enlisted to protect his country, not to be a Mafia enforcer.

Not that Britain is innocent in similar cases, of course.

I always thought she was trying to reach the secret service agent there but I read recently that she was actually trying to pick up the pieces of his brains and skull so that they could put him back together.

The young terrified girl stuck under the rubble of her house after being bombed in Gaza. Haunting

This young girls body being hugged by her aunt after being killed in an Israeli airstrike in Gaza.

Derek Wood and David Howes with the priest praying for them.

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

I came in to post this very picture. I’ll never forget it either. I was also 14 when I saw it. There’s hardly a week goes by when I don’t think about it.

Another one I’ll never forget is of two brothers in the twin towers talking to each other out of their separate office windows a few windows along from each other. I’ve never been able to find the picture again but I know they were brothers as their mum has been interviewed often about them.

Also the photo behind this story. It was very close to home for me given me and my husbands backgrounds, he was the Muslim and I was the Christian. In the very early 70’s it was very much a taboo and I could identify with the situations they must have faced to be together. I think of Bosco and Admira often.

https://balkaninsight.com/2021/05/19/sarajevos-romeo-and-juliet-enduring-symbols-of-wartime-tragedy/

And of course there are pictures of what is going on in the world today. Gaza in particular and I’m sure some of them will never leave me either as time goes by.

A soldier kissing a nurse in Times Square on VJ Day

A guard escaping over the newly built Berlin Wall in 1961

Photo from Bloody Sunday.with the priest

Young Stalin. I suppose in Books and movies evil people are ugly or have a facial expression or trait that make them unattractive.

Turkey Earthquake, father holding her daughter's hand when she was crushed to death on her bed.

Yep. 2 young men, wrong place, wrong time. Killed by a mob.

Lee Harvey Oswald being shot by Jack Ruby

I didn't think this thread was a competition.

God yes in the unexplained as a child

It is not. But unfortunately some of these incidents highlight man's inhumanity to man.

Half the thread is people trying to get across veiled political messages on the back of genuine atrocities. It's gross.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/in-pictures-43782851

This really upset me https://m.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/fr-alec-reid-death-it-was-a-photo-that-shocked-the-world-but-from-that-dark-day-a-sliver-of-light-appeared-on-the-horizon/29777931.html
It was 1988 I think. I had 3small children under 6, it seemed so cruel but father Reid went on to help broker the peace agreement.

They were so young, such a waste of life and their murderers got early release too.

Not a picture but a video. It was on the BBC website, probably about ten years ago. It was a group of African soldiers walking two women and their children out into the countryside to be shot for collaborating with the other side (I assume the children were a result of this). The BBC had posted the video to show how they (or someone) had managed to pinpoint where the war crime had occurred due to geographic locations, the soldiers' insignia etc. But it was one of the worst things I have ever seen - the women obviously knew what was going to happen, but the children did not. One little girl was about 5, the other women had a baby strapped to her back. I will never forget the expressions on their faces, the innocence of the little girl. I'm glad they caught those responsible, but it was just horrific, it went on for about 5 minutes, I couldn't stop watching but I wish I had (they didn't show them being shot, but showed the bodies afterwards). I'm not even going to try and find it to post a link. It's really stayed with me.

@BridgetRandomfuck I wasn’t aware of this.

I remember being really upset and shocked by this as a teenager. The pain and terror those men must have felt and the priest Fr Alec Reid giving them the last rites even though they weren’t Catholic, trying to offer what small comfort he could do they weren’t alone. I read later he had tried to stop it happening but couldn’t.

Journalists aren't allowed to interfere only observe.

Its not bloody Star Trek
https://www.theguardian.com/media/2012/jul/28/gutted-photographers-who-didnt-help