Most Famous/iconic photographs in history

[HangingBasketCase]

Does anyone else enjoy photogtaphy? I've been looking at some of the most iconic photographs of all time, and I have a few favourites. I'll share three of them with you now.

Firstly lunch a top a skyscraper. Taken in New York during the building of the Rockerfeller Centre. I can't get my head around how they were able to sit on a metal beam, so high up without anything to secure them! If you ever visit the Rockerfeller centre you can recreate this photo, it's become that famous!

Secondly St Paul's Cathedral taken early in the morning following a devastating air raid on the city of London. All of the buildings around the cathedral were destroyed, yet almost miraculously St Pauls survived. How inspirational this image must have been to people at the time, seeing the dome of the Cathedral rising from the smoke like a Phoenix from the flames.

Finally "The Kiss", taken on VJ Day 1945, in Time Square. I believe the identities of the couple are unknown, but they weren't actually a couple. They were random strangers, he just grabbed hold of her and kissed her in happiness because the war was over. Wonder what we'd make of that now?

Cinnabar those pictures have just made me cry, so powerful.

MrsDimitri, I so agree with you there - but I suppose even in the sexist way that photo is a document of its time.

Yy dogs being reunited is v emotive, but what got to me floods of tears was the little black child holding the old white lady's hand after Hurricane Katrina.

Fluffing. Yes, that's it, well done. it's just a picture that captures everything: hope, drama, triumph.

from the Vietnam war

For me this photo of the woman jumping out of her flat during the london riots is one I always remember.
I don't live too far from Croydon and watching the Twitter feeds of the carnage getting closer and closer was quite worrying

try again

from Vietnam War

Isambard Kingdom Brunel standing by the launching chains of the huge iron steamship Great Eastern. Interesting background to this photograph here. The photographer was Robert Howlett and it was taken in 1857. What I love about this picture is (1) how clearly you can see the enormous size of the ship just from the huge links in the chain compared with the size of IKB and (2) the amazing confidence IKB exudes.

This is the photo Katiegee was talking about. Also from Northern Ireland. My mother can remember watching this live on television (she's 46).

the picture of the vulture watching the child is the most horrific picture I have seen how could you not do anything. I know the photographer killed himself soon after. just tragic it shows the horrendous conditions some people are trying to survive and the awful side of human nature too that at times observe and do nothing is what we do

Lt EveDallas ...did you see the recent pics of Christina Schmidt with her new partner and baby ? Heartwarming and yes I recall the original pic you mention very well. Dignity indeed . And love .

I don't think the photographer was doing nothing, though, Freudian. He or she might by some miracle have saved that one child (although I fear it was already too late; vultures know). But in take the photograph thousands more children will have been snatched from a similar awful fate. How many people reading this thread have quietly made a donation to charity?

he didn't do anything for the child we know that he saw a photo opportunity, i know the child was apparently put down by her parents so they could collect food and that the vulture was then apparently chased away

I think it brings up a bigger question not just why he did not do anything to comfort the child but that this is still happening

Yes, just so.

What a moving thread. I'd seen some of these but not all; I've learned about a lot of the events leading to some of these photographs. I've cried buckets...especially learning that the baby a mother was carrying in the Vietnam war photo (different photo but same bombing with the little girl) didn't survive. So awful.

Also, I had no idea Jackie Kennedy stayed in the iconic, pink Chanel dress for so long and refused to clean up. And it must have been heart-breaking to stand there, like that, and watch Johnson be sworn in and take your husband's place. She must have felt like she was living in a nightmare.

I'd seen the photo of the baby and watching vulture before, I have to say now I'm a mother it hit me much harder.

That's prompted another thought - although I'm not sure that iconic is the right word, the photo of Madeline McCann on the missing posters is very evocative, to me at least, of a more simple, innocent time.

Fr Edward Daly, Bloody Sunday leading the party carrying the dying Jacky Duddy to safety, waving a white cloth and seeming to shield those behind him, with his arms outstretched.

German soldier shoots a woman in the back while she tries to shield her child.

Sadam statue removed

wicked - thanks for posting... I'm only coming back to this thread now and when I posted I wasn't sure if it was a good idea to post the actual image or not...

some amazing pictures and stories on this thread... I'd never seen the child and the vulture before, heartbreaking...

another offering: the Pale Blue Dot - a photograph of planet Earth taken in 1990 by the Voyager 1 space probe from a distance of about 6 billion km.

From this distant vantage point, the Earth might not seem of any particular interest. But for us, it's different. Consider again that dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every "superstar," every "supreme leader," every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there – on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

Torture at Quantanamo Bay

The KKK

katiegee I thought why not, how brutal and raw the photograph is, is what makes it iconic. Watched the news footage on youtube and cried my eyes out