WARNING: PAGE CONTAINS GRAPHIC IMAGES OF DESTRUCTION  &  DEATH

SLAVERY  

"Renty" (detail)                                         "Delia" (detail)

Top Image: "THREE SLAVES," Daguerreotypes, 1850
left: "Renty," Congo, on plantation of B.F. Taylor, Columbia, S.C.
middle: "Jack" (driver), Guinea. Plantation of B.F. Taylor, Esq., Columbia, S.C.
right: "Delia," country-born of African parents, daughter of Renty, Congo

Daguerreotypes of Black Slaves, 1850

In 1850 seven South Carolina slaves were photographed at the request of the famous naturalist Louis Agassiz to provide evidence of the supposed biological inferiority of Africans. Lost for many years, the photographs were rediscovered in the attic of Harvard’s Peabody Museum in 1976.

Delias Tears: race science

 

 

• Two 19th century daguerreotypes
• The Shocking Story Behind the White Slave Photographs
• The Civil War: Between the Battles
” US Slave
”

THE CIVIL WAR     (April 12, 1861 – May 9, 1865)

Federal Dead, Battlefield, Gettysburg 1863
Photograph: Matthew Brady

WORLD WAR I     (July 28, 1914 - November 11, 1918)

Shells hitting a German artillery position   (n.d.)
Photographer: unknown

A German solider dead on the wire   (n.d.)
Photographer: unknown

 

WWI LINKS:
• World War I Photo Gallery
  • World War I Zone Forum
    • In the thin light of dusk 1917
    • A French attack on German positions on the Somme, 1916
    • French artillery in Arras
    • untitled (foxhole, color photo)
    • A Canadian soldier surveys the field after the Battle of Passchendaele, 1917
    • Canadian stretcher bearers in Flanders, 1915
    • Allied soldiers & horses pick their way around massive shell crater, Flanders, n.d.
    • Stosstruppen in action. . . (early use of flamethrowers)
    • British troops pushing an ambulance through the mud of Flanders
    • Montage of three photographs of The Battle of Zonnebede
       by Australian Army photographer Frank Hurley.
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• The Heritage of the Great War
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RACISM

    •   LYNCHING

Randolph and Courtland Cox
"Lynching in Marion, Indiana" 1930
Lynching photography was used both as a
tool of oppression and a tool of resistance.
Photograph: Digital Journalist
Lynching in the United States

    •   SEGERATION  

"Segregated Fountain," nd
Photographer: Elliot Erwitt

THE GREAT DEPRESSION

(USA, Oct. 29, 1929 (Black Tuesday) - December 11, 1941 (US declares war))

"Migrant Mother" California," 1936
an icon of The Great Depression
Photographer: Dorothea Lange

THE SPANISH CIVIL WAR   (July 17, 1936 - April 1, 1939)

Loyalist Militiaman at Moment of Death Cerro Muriano,
Septermber 5, 1936 also known as "Falling Soldier"
Photographer: Robert Capa
Robert Capa - In Love and War

THE HOLOCAUST   (January 30, 1933 - May 9, 1945)

Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, May 1943
"Forcibly pulled out of dug-outs."
Photograph from Jurgen Stroop Report to Heinrich Himmler
The Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, I
The Holocaust and World War II: Timeline

Jurgen Stroop (German, 1895 - 1952) "was a high-ranking Nazi Party and SS official during World War II. He was best known for his role in liquidating the Warsaw Ghetto and for his book-length account of the operation: a document originally titled The Warsaw Ghetto Is No More. Following Germany's defeat, Stroop was sentenced to death for war crimes by a US military tribunal during the Dachau Trials in 1947. He was later extradited to Poland where he was also tried and convicted of crimes against humanity. He was hanged by Polish authorities in 1952."

Wikipedia

 

 

The Diary of a Young Girl, published in 1947, includes photos of Anne and the people she hid with, plus a map of the secret annex in the house on Prinsengracht. On the cover was this haunting photograph taken by an automatic photovending machine in 1939.

 

 

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WORLD WAR II   (September 1, 1939 - September 2, 1945)

 

 

    •   EUROPEAN CAMPAIGN - D-DAY   (June 6, 1944)

GI Landing on Omaha Beach on D-Day
Omaha Beach, Normandy, France, June 6, 1944
Photographer: Robert Capa for LIFE magazine
The Magnificent Eleven
The D-Day Photographs of Robert Capa

 

 

WWII LINKS:
• WWII Iconic Photos
  • Three dead American lie on the beach at Buna
  • Hiroshima, 6th August 1945
     photographs by Yoshito Matsushige
  • Nagasaki, August 9th 1945
  • Anne Frank
• Clinging to the normal during horrible times
• The Heritage of the Great War
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•
•

 

 

    •   PACIFIC CAMPAIGN - IWO JIMA   (February 23, 1945)

Flag Raisers of Iwo Jima, February 23, 1945
Photographer: unknown

 

    •   LIBERATION   (April, 1945)

The Liberation of Buchenwald, April 1945
Photographer: Margaret Bourke-White (for LIFE)

Survivors of Buchenwald Concentration Camp, April 16, 1945

 

    •   ATOMIC BOMBS

(1945, August 6th on Hiroshima & August 9th on Nagasaki)

The first use of nuclear power was developed in 1942, in the Manhattan Project, with the building of the first nuclear reactor - called uranium pile. This project culminated with the release of two atomic bombs on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

 

Atomic Bomb dropped on Nagasaki on August 9, 1945
The mushroom-shaped cloud reached 18 miles high.

 

On August 6, 1945, the US president, Harry Truman, gave the order drop the atomic bomb called "Little Boy" on the city of Hiroshima. Two and 17/2 minutes later, the bomb exploded, killing and wounding more than a hundred thousand people. The value of the energy released by the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima was about 24 million kWh and the heat generated reached temperatures of 10 million degrees.

Hiroshima after the atomic bomb explosion" August 6, 1945

Three days later, on August 9, another bomb called "Fatman," was dropped on Nagasaki. Forty thousand were killed and another forty thousand Japanese were injured.

Nagasaki after the atomic bomb explosion" August 9, 1945

Due to the harmful effects of radiation, the inhabitants of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were victims of various health problems. There have been numerous cases of children born with genetic damage and many cases of leukemia, just to name a few. The atomic weapon with power equivalent to twenty thousand tons of TNT, was a thousand times more powerful than any of bombs known at that time.

On September 2, 1945, Japanese representatives signed the Instrument of Surrender aboard the USS Missouri in Tokoy Bay - formally surrendering to the Allies and bringing an end to World War II.

At the end of World War II, there was the beginning of an atomic and nuclear arms race between various nations in fear of being disadvantaged. The former Soviet Union, United Kingdom, France, China and later India, Pakistan and Israel conducted its own nuclear tests. . .

Explosión bomba atómica

 

• fotos de Hiroshima
• fotos de Nagasaki
• PowerPoint of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
• Skinner Cafe e UFGD

 

 

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BREAD LINE, KENTUCKY   (1947)

 

There's No Way Like the American Way
Bread Line, Kentucky   (1947)
Photographer: Margaret Bourke-White

 

 

 

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CHE - HEROIC GUERRILLA FIGHTER   (1960 & 1967)

Che Guevara, "Guerrilero Heroico" Marcy 5, 1960
Photographer: Albert Korda

Corpse of Che, Bolivia, 1967
Photograph: Freddy Alborta

Image 1 above: “Guerrillero Heroico” or “Heroic Guerrilla Fighter” is one of the most popular and stylized pictures of all time. Taken by Alberto Korda on March 5, 1960, the image is of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara at a memorial service for victims of 'La Coubre' explosion. It is often considered as the most famous image in the world and certainly lionized Guevara's person. It is the most reproduced image in photography.

Image 2 above: "The Body of Che Guevara," 1967 - from one iconic image of Che to another, the Bolivian army took this photograph after capturing and killing the Marxist revolutionary leader as proof of his demise. . . they may have killed his body but his image (and spirit) lives on.

 

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT   (the 1960s)

Parker High School student Walter Gadsden being attacked by dogs
Birmingham Campaign, 1963
Photographer Bill Hudson, for The New York Times on May 4, 1963

• 390 Years: Yes We Can

 

VIETNAM WAR   (1963)

Self-immolation of Buddhist monk, Thich Quang Duc - June 11, 1963
Dying for Change by Marianne Arbogast

 

CIVIL RIGHTS MOVEMENT - JAMES MEREDITH   (June 6, 1966)

James Meredith,   June 6, 1966
Photographer:

 

This devastating image shows civil rights activist James Meredith moments after he was shot on June 6, 1966 while leading a civil rights march. Said march aimed to encourage African Americans to exercise their voting rights and this image shows him pulling himself across the Highway in visible pain. Right after being treated, he completed the march from Memphis to Jackson.

 

VIETNAM WAR   (1966)

Reaching Out October 1966
Photographer: Larry Burrows for Time & Life Pictures

In the image (above), wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie (center, with bandaged head) reaches out toward a stricken comrade after a fierce firefight south of the Demilitarized Zone in October 1966. The gesture demands the utmost compassion, while the landscape illuminates the apocalyptic nature of the conflict. It's the paradox of war; finding evidence of compassion within a hellish circumstance.

While the image itself is extraordinary, so is its story. As Ben Cosgrove (editor of LIFE.com) writes in his post, the magazine didn't publish the image in 1966 but five years later in February 1971: the occasion, an article devoted to Larry Burrows, who was killed earlier that month in Laos at the age of 44. The helicopter crash that killed him also took photographers Henri Huet of the Associated Press, Kent Potter of United Press International and Keisaburo Shimamoto of Newsweek.

In the image below, four Marines recover the body of a fifth as their company comes under fire near Hill 484 in Vietnam, October 1966. At right is the French-born photojournalist Catherine Leroy (1945 -€“ 2006); she was cropped out of the version of this photo that originally ran in Life.

An Iconic 'Life' Image You Must See

Four Marines Recover the Body of a Fifth October 1966
Photographer: Larry Burrows for Time & Life Pictures

 

 

VIETNAM WAR   (1968)

 

Viet Cong lieutenant being executed at close range
on a Saigon street by a South Vietnamese general (1968)
Photographer: Eddie Adams

Murder of Vietcong by Saigon Police Chief, Eddie Adams, 1968, This powerful photograph shows General Nguyen Ngoc Loan of the South Vietnamese Army about to kill the captain of a Vietcong squad at point-blank range. The photograph came to symbolize the brutality and harsh reality of the Vietnam War that was often shielded from Americans in the media and galvanized a worldwide anti-war movement

 

 

MY LAI MASSACRE   (March 16, 1968)

 

Massacre at My Lai, Vietnam, March 16, 1968
Photographer: Ronald L. Haeberle

 

 

DR. MARTIN LUTHER KING, JR. -   (USA, Jan. 15, 1929 - April 4, 1968)

 

Reverend Martin King, Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" Speech
March on Washington"   August 28, 1963
Image source: GIFSoup

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.   (1968)
Photographer: Matthew Lewis, The Washington Post

 

During the spring of 1968, Reverend Martin Luther King, Jr. traveled to Memphis, Tennessee, to lead a campaign for sanitation workers protesting their low wages and poor working conditions. Still a young man at 39 years old, Reverend King had become the nation's chief civil rights leader, known for his non-violent marches and demonstrations.

The night before Reverend King was killed, he delivered his final sermon in which he seemed to foresee his fate. "Like anybody I would like to live a long life," King said. "Longevity has its place. But I am not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And he has allowed me to go up to the mountain, and I have looked over, and I have seen the Promised Land."

On April 4, 1968, as King was standing on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel in Memphis - he was shot in the neck and died a short time later at the hospital.

Five days later, on April 9th, in Atlanta, Georgia, a mule-drawn caissson carrying the casket of assassinated Civil Rights leader Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. - followed by a funeral procession of dignitaries and aids - moved through the streets of Atlanta toward the Morehead College campus for a memorial service.

Casket of Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. on a
Mule-drawn Cart, Atlanta, April 9, 1968
Photograph: Robert Abbott Sengstacke/Getty Images

 

Dr King won the Nobel Peace Prize in 1964 for his powerful "I Have a Dream" speech - recited on August 28th, 1963 at the "March on Washington." Today Dr Kind is best known for his speeches, activism and especially for the laws he help get passed, The Civil Rights Act of 1964 and The Voting Rights Act of 1965.

 

LINKS:
• YouTube: I Have a Dream (full speech) August 28, 1963
• I Have a Dream (PDF)
• GIFSoup: Martin Luther King, Jr
• Tumblr: Martin Luther King, Jr
• MLK: The Man and The Movement
• 43th Anniversary of Assassination
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BIAFRA NIGERIA CIVIL WAR  

   
left: Ibo separatist guerrilla, near Onitsha, Biafra, Nig eria, April, 1968
photographer: Gilles Caron
right: Children of Biafra, photographer: Don McCullin

When the Igbos of eastern Nigeria declared themselves independent in 1967, Nigeria blockaded their fledgling country-Biafra. In three years of war, more than one million people died, mainly of hunger. In famine, children who lack protein often get the disease kwashiorkor, which causes their muscles to waste away and their bellies to protrude. War photographer Don McCullin drew attention to the tragedy. "I was devastated by the sight of 900 children living in one camp in utter squalor at the point of death," he said. "I lost all interest in photographing soldiers in action." The world community intervened to help Biafra, and learned key lessons about dealing with massive hunger exacerbated by war-a problem that still defies simple solutions.

Stop Child Abuse

Photographer - Gilles Caron - was born in 1939 in Neuilly near Paris, France.Dubbed the French "Robert Capa," he proceeded to cover the Six-Day War in Israel, conflict in Vietnam and Biafra (Nigeria), the May 1968 student upheavel in Paris, riots in Northern Ireland, anti-Soviet demonstrations in Prague, and the Toubou uprising against the central government in Chad in 1970.

On April 4 of that same year his meteoric career was cut short when he went missing in a Khmer Rouge-controlled area of Cambodia.

Contact Press: Gilles Caron

 

VIETNAM WAR  

Kent State massacre, May 4 1970
Photographer: John Filo

Naked 9 year old Phan Thj Kim Pjuc fleeing South Veitnamese napalm attack
on invading North Vietnamese at the Trang Bang village, June 8, 1972
Photographer: Huynh Cong "Nick" Ut

 

 

CANDY DARLING ON HER DEATHBED   (1974)

 

Candy Darling on her Deathbed   (1977)
Photographer: Peter Hujar   (1934-1987)
Peter Hujar Archive

“Unfortunately before my death I had no desire left for life . . . I am just so bored by everything. You might say bored to death. (D)id you know I couldn't last. I always knew it. I wish I could meet you all again.”

Final letter to Andy Warhol and
followers by Candy Darling

 

"Lauded by the singer Antony Hegarty as 'one of the 20th century's greatest, if unsung photographers', Peter Hujar roamed the streets of downtown New York after-hours in the late 1970s and 80s, documenting its untamed margins: the freaks and outsiders who lived on the edges of society, its burned out buildings and dimly lit streets. . . .

A child of Ukrainian immigrants, Hujar grew up in a broken, abusive home which he left at age 16. He learnt his trade as apprentice to Richard Avedon working on fashion shoots before getting commissions from Harpers Bazaar. He later turned his back on the fashion world to work in fine-art photography, pointing his camera at friends and members of his extended community (from Andy Warhol, Susan Sontag, John Waters and Robert Wilson) and other lesser known members of the New York demimonde. . . . Obsessively circling around themes of mortality and the passing of time, his work exudes a powerfully affecting melancholy, an austere, fragile sensuality and most of all a noble empathy with his subjects. Noted the writer, Fran Lebowitz (also a subject of his camera), 'Every single person he photographed, every single person that he was interested in, was a misfit. Peter was a misfit.'"

 

Peter Hujar's "life was defined by his friendships with other artists, writers, and musicians, and few people were closer to Peter Hujar (1934-1987) than Paul Thek (1933-1988) and David Wojnarowicz (1954-1992). The portraits he made of them attest to the intimate, complex, and productive nature of their relationships. All three artists were to die of AIDS within a few years of one another, and the highly emotional portraits he made of them are always beautiful, although rarely in a conventional way.

Thek and Hujar met in 1956 at the outset of their careers, and shared a relationship that was both romantic and intensely productive. They visited the catacombs in Palermo, Italy, together in 1963. . . Huja'’s photographs of the catacombs make up half the images for his seminal 1976 publication, Portraits in Life and Death, the only book of his work produced during his lifetime.

Hujar met David Wojnarowicz in 1980 and immediately became a source of profound influence and inspiration for the younger artist. They collaborated on numerous works and remained friends until Hujar's death in 1987. David died five years latter in 1992.

Peter Hujar exhibition
Matthew Marks Gallery, Oct-Dec. 2011

 

LINKS:
• Peter Hujar, Self-portrait, 1980
• Peter Hujar Archive likes
• AnOther: Who, What, Why - Peter Hujar
• Matthew Marks Gallery, NYC
  • Three Lives: Peter Hujar, Paul Thek, & David Wojnarowwicz
  • exhibition announcement
  • installation video
  • works in the exhibition
    • Paul Thek in Black T-Shirt   (1975)
    • Self-Portrait   (1975)
    • Self-Portrait, Seated   (1980)
    • Self-Portrait (with String around Neck)  (1980)
    • David Wojnarowicz, Night, Manhattan   (1985)
    • David Lighting Up   (1985)
• Whitney Museum: Paul Thek: Diver, A Retrospective
• Review: 'Three Lives'
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CHINESE STUDENT PROTEST   (1989)

"tank man" Beijing's Tiananmen Square, China, 1989
Photographer: John Schaer for CNN

 

FAMINE IN SUDAN   (1993)

Southern Sudan, March 1st 1993
photographer: Kevin Carter

When the Igbos of eastern Nigeria declared themselves independent in 1967, Nigeria blockaded their fledgling country - Biafra. In three years of war, more than one million people died, mainly of hunger. In famine, children who lack protein often get the disease kwashiorkor, which causes their muscles to waste away and their bellies to protrude. War photographer Don McCullin drew attention to the tragedy. "I was devastated by the sight of 900 children living in one camp in utter squalor at the point of death," he said. "I lost all interest in photographing soldiers in action." The world community intervened to help Biafra, and learned key lessons about dealing with massive hunger exacerbated by war-a problem that still defies simple solutions.

Starving Child and Vulture, Kevin Carter, 1993 - The most haunting image on the most iconic images of photography, Kevin Carter captured the devastating famine in Sudan with a photograph of a toddler crawling to a UN feeding center while a vulture stalks her as prey. Carter won a Pulitzer Prize for his work but received harsh criticism for both the photograph and for not helping the child. A year later, gripped by the devastation and depression he had seen, Carter committed suicide.

 

TERRORISM - AL-QAEDA  

September 11 Attacks (9/11) September 11, 2001
Series of four coordinated terrorist attacks launched by the Islamic
terrorist group al-Qaeda upon the United States in New York City
and the Washington, D.C. area.
Photographer: NBC News video

Remembering "9/11"
Photographer: unknown

 

IRAQ WAR - ABU GHRAIB  

Abu Ghraib Prison - torture and prisoner abuse
Iraqi prisoner in Abu Ghraib Prison, February 16, 2006
photograph of a U.S. military or Department of Defense employee

 

 

The Sleep of Reason Begets Brutality (2003) digital collage
left: This is Nazi brutality poster by Ben Shahn, 1942
Printed by the Government - Office for the Office of War Information
right: Brutality at Abu Ghraib, photograph, 2006
Copyright © 2013 Scattergood-Moore   digital photograph

About Ben Shahn's This is Nazi brutality (1942) - "Lidice was a Czech mining village that was obliterated by the Nazis in retaliation for the 1942 shooting of a Nazi official by two Czechs. All men of the village were killed in a 10-hour massacre; the women and children were sent to concentration camps. The destruction of Lidice became a symbol for the brutality of Nazi occupation during World War II. "

"Under their system, the individual is a cog in a military machine, a cipher in an economic despotism; the individual is a slave. These facts are documented in the degradation and suffering of the conquered countries, whose fate is shared equally by the willing satellites and the misguided appeasers of the Axis."

Government Information Manual for the Motion
Picture Industry - Office of War Information

"Many of the fear-inspiring posters depicted Nazi acts of atrocity. Although brutality is always part of war, the atrocities of World War II were so terrible, and of such magnitude, as to engender a new category of crime--crimes against humanity. The images here were composed to foster fear. Implicit in these posters is the idea that what happened there could happen here."

Powers of Persuasion

 

 

 

 

SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHIC LINKS:

• Iconic Photos
• 5 Iconic Photographs  |  5 more
  • Iconic Photos of the 1940s
  • Iconic Photos of the 1950s
  • Iconic Photos of the 1960s
  • Iconic Photos of the 1970s
  • Iconic Photos of the 1980s
  • Iconic Photos of the 1990s
  • Iconic Photos of the 2000s
• Hidden Playground: iconic photos of the 60's
• 10 Photographs That Changed the World
• Iconic Images of Human Right Violations
• Some Iconic, Shocking Pictures
• Mairasheherliscmp's Blog
• Photographic History of the Mexican Revolution 1910-1942
• Hurrican Carter: The Other Side of the Story
• Fiji Island Mermaid Press
• Tumblr: Holocaust
• Photographer as Witness: A Portrait of Domestic Violence
• Witness to the Lonmin shootings: Photographers Blog
• The Ghosts of Vietnam
• Vietnam: Old Photos Become Windows . . .
• Galerie Verdeau, Paris: Afrique noire
• Niborama
• tumblr: artQueer
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SELECTED PHOTOGRAPHERS & PHOTOGRAPHS:
• Fight 1960
• Book Review: Fire in the Belly
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PART I

ACTIVIST ART

 

 

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