Most powerful photograph taken

[Dave the Explosive Newt]

http://bio.m2osw.com/gcartable/reproduc ... etus_2.JPG (warning - huge)

I can't remember the artist's name just now (and the above aren't examples), but there is a fantastic sequence of images taken in utero. I find it staggering to see the building blocks of life slotting together to create something far greater. Life at its most fragile point.

[hr]

Mmmm, cake.

[Sid]

I'm not thick, I know that these images are essential so that we rich bastards can take a couple of minutes to feel bad about what other people have to live like, and I know that as soon as he's taken his picture he'll probably do what he can to help the child, dead or alive, but, how he can wait those few minutes to take the picture is what I don't understand. I think me and most people if we saw the child in the distance as we were approaching we'd start running towards the child to see if he/she were alive and try to do something to help. Not get there and think, "oh this would make a great shot" and set up my tripod whilst buggering about with the angle.

[Cain]

Quoting Sid from 00:35, 10th Apr 2006
I think me and most people if we saw the child in the distance as we were approaching we'd start running towards the child to see if he/she were alive and try to do something to help.

Should David Attenborough protect gazelles from lions as well?

The photographer was a free-lance photographer, there to document what was going on in the Sudan. That was his job. He wasn't an aid worker.

If it makes you feel any better, he's dead now. suicide.

[hr]

I hold an element of surprise

[Bonnie]

It will have been a professional photographer who took this (only a professional would have been allowed in this close and/or would hve had the lens powerful enough to take it), and even amateurs can note that this professional framed the photo very well and was very smart to have the vibrant colours of the flag and firefighters in the foreground on the grey collapsed building behind it.
It's a perfectly composed photograph, technically.

Quoting Clonion from 15:45, 9th Apr 2006

Quoting liliputian from 12:44, 9th Apr 2006
I don't really buy into all that flag waving rubbish the americans seem obsessed with, but even i was struke by this image. it really shows a determination to continue on despite suffering the greatest attack on american soil since pearl harbour. their patriotism in this case is extremely admirable.

[hr]

I love cheese.

[Frank]

This one isn't the best, but I couldn't find one of the better ones I've seen, so this'll do for now:



Frank

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"There is only ever one truth. Things are always black or white, there's no such thing as a shade of grey. If you think that something is a shade of grey it simply means that you don't fully understand the situation. The truth is narrow and the path of the pursuit of truth is similarly narrow."

[Orcas]

The photo of the girl and the vulture was taken after about 20 minutes of watching the scene, after which he chased the vulture away. The photographer was Kevin Carter.

[Lodestone]

Surprised we haven't seen this one yet:

[tramp]

Quoting DrAlex from 17:08, 9th Apr 2006

Quoting Ben Reilly from 16:35, 9th Apr 2006
Why do you think that that picture is powerful?

The horrors of war and war crimes are often dismissed in the minds of many as a very removed thing, and easy to forget. This image, at first, seems as inoculous as a man putting a gun to another man's head can be, because all you see is fear in the victim's face. After you learn that it isn't fear for being shot, that the expression is because he has just been shot-and is indeed dead at the time this photo was taken-you can't help but stop and think about it.

Surely that's what a powerful image does?

[hr]

"Listen to DrAlex."-Polli
http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37100343

I remember this image from A Level history. Our teacher told us that he'd done some research on the picture and the man who just shot the other one did it because he'd just returned home to find his house had been ransacked and his wife and children had been killed either by the man we see in the photo or by someone who had been tipped off about their hiding place by him, I can't quite remember.

[RGJohns]

This was taken minutes before the Omagh bomb went off in 1998.

The red car had previously been stolen, and was parked containing 300 pounds of fertiliser-based explosive attached to a semtex trigger.

When it went off it killed 29 people, including some of the children in the photo on a Spanish exchange trip.

I think it sums up how life can change in a heartbeat.

[Nymphomanic]

/Users/danemac/Desktop/images.jpg

/Users/danemac/Desktop/images-1.jpg

/Users/danemac/Desktop/images-2.jpg

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I read most of the night and go south in winter - wasteland

[Nymphomanic]

I've been tryiing to upload the hiroshima ictures, but couldn't.

there's one of the enola gay just befroe and the pilots posing before they take off, the city before, the city after, some burns victims, and of course the explosion

[Raindance]

Quoting Sid from 22:01, 9th Apr 2006
I hate photos like this, totally despise them for the simple reason that while that child lies huddled on the floor there is some twat with a camera and flash taking a picture of him/her. Instead of fiddling with a camera why doesn't the photographer help the child instead of gawking. I know the reason for the picture, but how many people actually put their hands in their pockets to help or even go across to help these places out just because of that image, and is that what the photographer is thinking? I doubt it.

Quoting mariposita from 19:14, 9th Apr 2006

You might feel better knowing the guy who took it committed suicide not long after. His name was Kevin Carter. Here's a quote from his suicide note:

"I am depressed ... without phone ... money for rent ... money for child support ... money for debts ... money!!! ... I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain ... of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police, of killer executioners...I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky."

What a heartless bastard, eh?

Read this then make up your mind: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kevin_Carter

No snap judgements in future please.

[hr]

Maybe all I'll see is sunshine

[mariposita]

I agree with you here, this photo really shocked me when somebody emailed it to me. Insight - the child is not dead, it is crawling to a feeding centre nearby, which is why the photographer was there. He took the photo - spent a good half hour getting the best shot -, and i think he committed suicide later as a result. In the source that i saw, it said that nobody knew what happened to the child, that it continued crawling and the photographer sat down to have a cigarette. Maybe this is inaccurate, but WTF???? Call me crazy, but surely, surely, ANYBODY would have carried the child to the feeding centre?? even if it looked like there was no hope? This makes me feel absolutely sick, for lots of reasons, but it is true that this photo generated a huge amount of money and aid. So I guess there is a flip side...but I really don't even know what to think, except my gut feeling is that it is somehow not right.

Quoting Sid from 22:01, 9th Apr 2006
I hate photos like this, totally despise them for the simple reason that while that child lies huddled on the floor there is some twat with a camera and flash taking a picture of him/her. Instead of fiddling with a camera why doesn't the photographer help the child instead of gawking. I know the reason for the picture, but how many people actually put their hands in their pockets to help or even go across to help these places out just because of that image, and is that what the photographer is thinking? I doubt it.

Quoting mariposita from 19:14, 9th Apr 2006

[Sid]

You people are so thick, do you really think that someone's suicide is going to make me feel better? Clearly he was overcome by what he saw, but I still think instead of taking a picture he should have helped the child.

[smiley]

Wow... Calling people thick really helps make a point. The point that you don't understand what they are trying to say.

All people are trying to do is make the point that Kevin Carter was not just 'some twat with a camera flashing away'. If you did a bit of reading about his life you would know that he risked his life many times to bring people shocking images of Apartheid. He was shot at, beaten up and went into some incredibly dangerous places to get some good shots. Basically you were making assumptions about why he was in the part of the world and what his thoughts were as he took that picture. Do a bit of research before you condemn.

That particular picture is famous because it provoked such a huge response when it first appeared. It is a harrowing image but it made alot of people actually do something about the famine in Sudan. I think he was right to the take the picture. It produced alot of good.

[jequirity]

They're set up to take one helluva powerful photograph

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LEEERRRROYYYY!!!!

Andrew W K Day 9th of May

[JM]

[img]http://www.artwallpapers.com/photography_desktop_wallpapers/lunch_on_a_skyscraper/02/lunch_on_skyscraper02.jpg[/img]


sorry its so big :S

but only cos they dont seem to give a crap whereas i'd be clinging for dear life...


[hr]

"Life can be full of many problems"; this can be translated into "tormenting you is how the big man gets his jollies"

[trouble]

Quoting Lodestone from 09:09, 10th Apr 2006
Surprised we haven't seen this one yet:

I'm sorry I'm not very history-minded. What's going on here? Excuse my ignorance

[hr]

"Just stay with me, safe and ignorant,
Safe from pain and truth and choice and other poison devils,
See, they don't give a fuck about you, like I do." (APC- pet)

http://standrews.facebook.com/profile.php?id=37100566

[Rufus]

[img]http://www.newseum.org/pulitzer/html/17/main.jpg[/img]

Susan Walsh 'Clinton Impeachment' 1998, won the Pulitzer 1999.

[Rufus]

An extremely depressing picture, but powerful nonetheless:

http://www.pulitzer.org/year/2005/break ... one04.html