The 10 Most Iconic Images of Photography

10 .

An Indian tailor was caught in the monsoon floodwaters in Porbandar.  The city had been underwater for a week. He was a tailor and the sewing machine represented his livelihood.  Unfortunately, the machine was ruined, but when the picture appeared on the cover of the National Geographic Magazine, the machine's manufacturer sent him a new one.

 

9.

This photograph of construction workers casually eating their lunch on a skyscraper beam suspended high about Manhattan can lay claim to being one of the 20th century's most recognisable images.

8.

American athletes Tommie Smith, center, and John Carlos raise their fists and hang their heads while the U.S. national anthem plays during their medal ceremony at the 1968 Summer Olympics in Mexico City. Their black power salute became front page news around the world as a symbol of the struggle for civil rights. To their left stood Australian Peter Norman, who expressed his support by wearing an Olympic Project for Human Rights badge.

 

7.

Aspiring photojournalist Charles Porter was working near the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building in Oklahoma City in 1995 when "there was just a huge, huge explosion." He rushed to the scene and saw firefighter Chris Fields emerge from the rubble holding a dying infant, 1-year-old Baylee Almon. Porter's Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of the moment became a symbol of the Oklahoma City bombing, which claimed 168 lives.

 

6.

During a raid at a Miami home in 2000, armed federal agents confront Elian Gonzalez, 6, and one of the men who helped rescue the boy. Gonzalez watched his mother drown when the boat smuggling them from Cuba capsized. Under international law, U.S. authorities were required to return the boy to his father in Cuba. Alan Diaz's photograph of the saga's defining moment won a Pulitzer Prize. "The cry I heard that day I had never heard in my life," Diaz said a decade later. "A cry like that will haunt anyone forever."

 

5.

During the Vietnam War, Eddie Adams photographed Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan, a South Vietnamese police chief, killing Viet Cong suspect Nguyen Van Lem on a Saigon street during the early stages of the Tet Offensive in 1968. Adams later regretted the impact of the Pulitzer Prize-winning image, apologizing to Gen. Nguyen and his family for the damage it did to the general's reputation. "I'm not saying what he did was right," Adams wrote in Time magazine, "but you have to put yourself in his position."

4.

Associated Press photographer Nick Ut photographed terrified children running from the site of a napalm attack during the Vietnam War in 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped napalm on its own troops and civilians. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The image communicated the horrors of the war and contributed to the growing anti-war sentiment in the U.S. After taking the photograph, Ut took the children to a hospital in Saigon.

 

3.

“I have been a witness, and these pictures are my testimony. The events I have recorded should not be forgotten and must not be repeated.” This is what you can read as soon as you open the photographer’s personal site. This image was taken by James Nachetwey.

 

2.

Richard Drew captured this image of a man falling from the World Trade Center in New York after the terror attacks on September 11, 2001. Its publication led to a public outcry from people who found the photograph insensitive. Drew sees it differently. On the 10th anniversary of the attacks, he said he considers the falling man an "unknown soldier" who he hopes "represents everyone who had that same fate that day." It's believed that upwards of 200 people fell or jumped to their deaths after the planes hit the towers.

 

1.

Kevin Carter's 1993 photograph of a starving child in southern Sudan brought him worldwide attention -- and criticism. Carter said the girl reached a nearby feeding center after he drove the vulture off, but questions persisted about why he didn't carry her there himself. Months after winning a Pulitzer Prize for the image, the South African photographer committed suicide. He was struggling with depression and coping with the recent death of his close friend and colleague Ken Oosterbroek.