Favorite Timeless/Poweful Pictures

[David Octavius]

There are so many pictures/images that by themselves say so more than mere words could ever do - lets share some. I will start with the below photo - the courage of one man to stop a column of tanks

[thomez]

[jimeigh]

[RMNIXON]

[RMNIXON]

[RMNIXON]

[Scrum]

[jimeigh]

[IminWonderland]

Originally Posted by thomez

When I first saw these two pictures in High School, they changed me.

[IminWonderland]

[IminWonderland]

Originally Posted by Scrum

My Grad Advisor, Irena Praitis, constantly quotes him:

"BE THE CHANGE YOU SEEK IN THE WORLD."

If you want a more peaceful world, practice peace. If you want a more generous world, become generous. If you want a loving world, love all you can.

Chills me everytime.

[David Octavius]

[Stylerod]

The Kiss

[Publius]

This one gets me every time ...

[Publius]

Originally Posted by thomez

Do you know the actual story behind this one? It's really disturbing, more so than you can ever know from the photo.

[Stylerod]

I always loved this one.

[thomez]

Originally Posted by Publius

Do you know the actual story behind this one? It's really disturbing, more so than you can ever know from the photo.

I've read it before, but don't recall it exactly.

[JaJae]

Originally Posted by Stylerod

I always loved this one.

I just came in this thread to post that picture. My brother is an architect, when he got his apartment with his girlfriend I bought him that picture as a gift. Proudly displayed over the entertainment center..

[Publius]

Originally Posted by thomez

I've read it before, but don't recall it exactly.

From wiki:

It was while covering the Vietnam War for the Associated Press that he took his best-known photograph – the picture of police chief General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Vietcong prisoner, Nguyen Van Lem, on a Saigon street, on February 1, 1968, during the opening stages of the Tet Offensive.

Adams won the 1969 Pulitzer Prize for Spot News Photography and a World Press Photo award for the photograph (captioned 'General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executing a Viet Cong prisoner in Saigon'), but would later lament its notoriety.

On Nguyen Ngoc Loan and his famous photograph, Adams wrote in Time :

The general killed the Viet Cong; I killed the general with my camera. Still photographs are the most powerful weapon in the world. People believe them; but photographs do lie, even without manipulation. They are only half-truths.

What the photograph didn't say was, 'What would you do if you were the general at that time and place on that hot day, and you caught the so-called bad guy after he blew away one, two or three American people?'

Adams later apologized in person to General Nguyen and his family for the irreparable damage it did to Loan's honor while he was alive. When General Nguyen died, Adams praised him as a hero of a just cause.

and

Nguyễn Văn Lém (referred to as Captain Bay Lop) (died 1 February 1968 in Saigon) was a member of the Viet Cong who was summarily executed in Saigon during the Tet Offensive. The execution was captured on film by photojournalist Eddie Adams, and the momentous image became a symbol of hostility to the war. The execution was explained at the time as being the consequence of Lém's suspected guerrilla activity and war crimes, and otherwise due to a general "wartime mentality."

On the second day of Tet, amid fierce street fighting, Lém was captured and brought to Brigadier General Nguyễn Ngọc Loan, then Chief of the Republic of Viet Nam National Police. Using his personal sidearm, General Loan summarily executed Lém in front of AP photographer Eddie Adams and NBC television cameraman Vo Suu. The photograph and footage were broadcast worldwide, galvanizing the anti-war movement; Adams won a 1969 Pulitzer Prize for his photograph.

South Vietnamese sources said that Lém commanded a Viet Cong assassination and revenge platoon, which on that day had targeted South Vietnamese National Police officers, or in their stead, the police officers' families; these sources said that Lém was captured near the site of a ditch holding as many as thirty-four bound and shot bodies of police and their relatives, some of whom were the families of General Loan's deputy and close friend. (In some accounts, the deputy was a victim as well; in others, the number of murdered relatives were as few as six.) Photographer Adams confirmed the South Vietnamese account, although he was only present for the execution. Lém's widow confirmed that her husband was a member of the Viet Cong and she did not see him after the Tet Offensive began. Shortly after the execution, a South Vietnamese official who had not been present said that Lém was only a political operative.

Though military lawyers have yet to definitively decide whether Loan's action violated the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war (Lém had not been wearing a uniform nor fighting enemy soldiers in the alleged commission of war crimes), where POW status was granted independently of the laws of war it was limited to Viet Cong seized during military operations[1].

[RMNIXON]