Iconic Photos

In 1917, Elsie Wright, 16, and her cousin Frances Griffith, 10, borrowed a camera belonging to Elsie’s father and took two pictures of what the girls claimed were fairies in Cottingley Beck, England. When Mr. Wright saw fairies in the pictures, he considered them fake and banned Elsie from using the camera again. Her mother, Polly, however was convinced of their authenticity and publicized the photos. Initially, the images were authenticated by some of the leading photography experts of the time although Kodak was less convinced, arguing that there were many ways to fake images like these.

Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the Sherlock Holmes stories and a believer in spiritualism, saw the photos, was convinced that they were genuine and wrote about them in The Strand in 1920. The article created a media storm and the girls took three more pictures showing fairies dancing and enjoying a sun bath.

It was only in 1978 that a researcher spotted that the fairies were identical to drawings in Princess Mary’s Gift Book, a children’s book published in 1917. Three years later the girls, then in their late seventies, admitted that they had staged four of the five images using paper cut-outs and hatpins. Frances continued to claim that the fifth image (below) was genuine; however, they insisted that they really had seen fairies.

Above, a candid picture of Josef Stalin, captured by Lt. Gen. Nikolai Vlasik, the dictator’s bodyguard. Vlaski, Stalin’s erstwhile confidante, co-conspirator and son-in-law, was purged by his master in 1952. After Stalin died in 1953, he was released from a gulag. Vlasik’s off-the-record photos of Stalin caused a sensation in the early 1960s when an enterprising Soviet journalist spirited some out, selling them to newspapers and magazines worldwide.

Now, author David King documents otherwise lost Soviet images. Gathered from advertisements, posters, photographs, and even mug shots, these images reveal a piece of history. In the new book called, “Red Star Over Russia: A Visual History of the Soviet Union“, King covers his research of images from the USSR’s inception to Stalin’s death.

For images from the book, see Foreign Policy Magazine here.

One of the earlier photo-pioneers, Hippolyte Bayard (1807–1887) was persuaded to postpone announcing his photographic processes to the French Academy of Sciences by François Arago, a friend of Louis Daguerre, who invented the rival daguerreotype process. Arago’s dealings cost Bayard the recognition as one of the principal inventors of photography. He eventually gave details of the process to the French Academy of Sciences on February 24, 1840 in return for money to buy better equipment.

As a reaction to the injustice he felt he had been subjected to, Bayard created the first staged photograph entitled, Self Portrait as a Drowned Man. In the image, he pretends to have committed suicide, sitting and leaning to the right. Bayard wrote on the back of his most notable photograph:

“The corpse which you see here is that of M. Bayard, inventor of the process that has just been shown to you. As far as I know this indefatigable experimenter has been occupied for about three years with his discovery. The Government which has been only too generous to Monsieur Daguerre, has said it can do nothing for Monsieur Bayard, and the poor wretch has drowned himself. Oh the vagaries of human life….! … He has been at the morgue for several days, and no-one has recognized or claimed him. Ladies and gentlemen, you’d better pass along for fear of offending your sense of smell, for as you can observe, the face and hands of the gentleman are beginning to decay.”

He managed to send the death picture to his antagonists with this suicide note attached to the back. Two years later, the Societe d’Encouragement pour I’Industrie Nationale gave Bayard 3,000 francs. Today, death features large in war, disaster and famine photography and it usually sends a stronger message. With a 12 minute exposure, Bayard did just that by playing dead 170 years ago.

By the time the USS Maine, an American warship in Havana Harbour was blew up under questionable circumstances with over 250 hands lost, the American public had already formed their united stand on the rebellion in Cuba. Two leading newspapers of the time, Joseph Pulitzer’s The World, and William Randolph Hearst’s the New York Journal, both informed their readers of the virtue of the Cubans and the perfidy and cruelty of the Spaniards.

Two editors were rivals and wanted to attract more readers, and to do so, both Pulitzer and Hearst claimed that the Spanish were the cause of the sinking of the U.S.S. Maine. Pulitzer covered the horrible explosion of the ship while Hearst focused on the enemy who set the bomb — and offered a reward of 50,000 dollars to anyone who can detect the perpetrator. To this day, what happened on 15 February under the cover of night at 9:40 p.m. remained a mystery.

The World says that the Maine was exploded by the Spanish because one of their journalists arriving from Cuba had “overheard” a plot to blow up the Maine. Thus began the long march of the war hawks: the assistant secretary of the navy, Teddy Roosevelt left his post to fight the Spain. From then on, it was “Remember the Maine! To hell with Spain!” all the way to San Juan Hill. The war was over in a matter of weeks, but marked the birth of the American imperial overreach.

Usually, this site doesn’t consider these media-hyped photographs as iconic, but the above photo is so emblematic of everything that is wrong with our media-addiction and is rightfully causing some outrage so I find it worthy to mention it in passing.

Sized only 3×3 inches and buried on page 194 of September issue of Glamour magazine, the photo was part of an article on body acceptance. It seemingly rejects the idea that models like Lizzie Millier above can’t be glamourous or fashionable because of their ‘plus-sized bodies’. Nearly nude photo of 180-lbs, 5’11″, 20-year old by Walter Chin went against mainstream by not being airbrushed–a practice so common in magazines like Vogue, Playboy and Glamour.

Although she has a body mass index of 25.1 (two-tenths above what is “normal”), she is not technically ‘plus sized’, as many bloggers were clamoring. The average American female has a BMI of 26.5. Although many are saying that she will change the face of the fashion (they limited their opinions to facebook, twitter and blogs), that lofty goal may be impractical. “We are a culture where the Karl Lagerfelds of the world proclaim Kate Moss too fat,” wrote Newsweek.

Miller seems to be cherishing her 15 minutes of fame though: “I’ve been that girl, flipping through magazines trying to find just one person who looked a little bit like me. And when I didn’t find it I would start to think there’s something wrong with the way that I looked. When J. Lo and Beyoncé came out and were making curves sexy, I started to accept myself more. It’s funny, but just seeing them look and feel sexy enabled me to do the same.” She sat through an interview with MSNBC, which is still devoting pretty big chuck on cable news time to her.

This is the most dramatic moment in thoroughbred racing’s history. By the 1973 Belmont Stakes, the horse Secretariat had already won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes. Only four horses joined Secretariat for the June 9, 1973 Stakes, including Sham, who had finished second in both the Derby and Preakness, and who eventually finished the last in the Belmont. Three other horses were thought to have little chance by the bettors.

Secretariat with its jockey Ron Turcotte races into history by winning the Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. In doing so, Secretariat became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and only the 9th in history, and it broke the margin-of-victory record set by Triple Crown winner Count Fleet, 25 lengths. In front of 67,000 people, Secretariat ran the fastest 1.5 miles on dirt in history, and was so far ahead of the others that the cameraman couldn’t even keep him and the next closest horse in the same shot. Famed track photographer Bob Coglianese took the above photo, the only one which included Secretariat and the other horses.

See the youtube video here.

The first Sonny Liston-Cassius Clay fight in 1964 when Liston was the world heavyweight champion ended in controversy: during the fourth round, Clay started complaining that there was something burning in his eyes and that he could not see. It has been theorized that a substance used to stop Liston’s cuts from bleeding caused the irritation. Clay won the match on a TKO.

A rematch was set in May 25th 1965, this time with Liston as challenger; Clay was now Muhammad Ali after joining the Nation of Islam the previous year. Due to the fightt being staged in a small auditorium in remote Lewiston, Maine, only 2,500 fans were present, setting the all-time record for the lowest attendance for a heavyweight championship fight. (It remains the only heavyweight title fight held in the state of Maine.)

Midway through the first round, Liston fell to the canvas; Ali refused to retreat to a neutral corner, standing over his fallen opponent, gesturing and yelling at him, “Get up and fight, sucker!” Neil Leifer, a 5’6″ reporter who covered many boxing matches, struggled to capture this moment, which has since become one of the iconic images in sports history. Sports Illustrated used the photo to cover their “The Century’s Greatest Sports Photos” special issue. Leifer thinks it is both the triumph of the powerful man and the vulnerability of the fallen that combined to make this photo a lingering masterpiece.

The blow that ended the match became known as “the phantom punch,” so named because most people at ringside did not see it. There were allegations that Liston was blackmailed by the Mafia or the Nation of Islam extremists to forfeit the match.

Dominick Dunne, who died today as the age of 83, covered some of the most famous trials of our time–Claus von Bulow, William Kennedy Smith, the Menendez brothers, Michael Skakel, Phil Spector–as a correspondent for Vanity Fair magazine.

It was the 1995 trial of O. J. Simpson, the former football star charged with stabbing to death his ex-wife Nicole Brown and her male friend Ronald Goldman, that brought Dunne to media spotlight. Dunne was convinced of Simpson’s guilt and appeared regularly on television to comment on the trial’s many twists. When the jury acquitted Simpson on all counts, Dunne could be seen in the courtroom on live TV looking stunned, his mouth agape. It was something personally affronting to this man who started covering trials only in his 50s, through personal tragedy — his daughter’s murder.

The iconic image of Dunne during O. J. Simpson verdict was one of the most indelible images of the trial: the petite, gray-haired 69-year old with his jaw literally dropped to his striped silk tie, mouth still agape as he looked around him at the weeping Goldmans on one side, the rejoicing Simpsons on another, the stone-faced Browns behind him. Half-an-hour later, Dunne staggered into the CBS booth for a brief chat with Dan Rather, and he continued his fight against O. J. Simpson. When Simpson was again on trial on charges of kidnapping and armed robbery in 2008, 82-year old Dunne traveled to Las Vegas to cover the trial and wrote a bellicose article for Vanity Fair.

In the following video, Dunne’s stunned expression can be seen after 1 min 50 sec mark.

After Nixon and Kennedy, there was Kennedy and McCormack fighting over John Kennedy’s old senate seat. Less than a month after turning 30 in 1962, Edward Moore Kennedy declared his candidacy for the remaining two years of his brother’s Senate term. He entered the race with a tailwind of family money and political prominence. Nevertheless, Edward J. McCormack Jr., the state’s attorney general and a nephew of John W. McCormack, then speaker of the United States House of Representatives, also decided to go after the seat.

The debate was a bitter fight. McCormack tried to stir up Kennedy, who was known for his anger. McCormack ridiculed Kennedy for his lack of qualifications. “The office of United States senator should be merited, and not inherited,” the speaker of the house’s nephew said. Kennedy, shaky at times, stuck to his rehearsed answers and resisted McCormack’s bait. His voice cracking, he said in closing, “We should not have any talk about personalities or families.”

In one of the most entertaining moments in debating’s history, McCormack jabbed his finger in the air toward Kennedy (above), noting if his opponent’s name were Edward Moore, his candidacy “would be a joke.” Over wild applause, he continued, “But nobody’s laughing because his name is not Edward Moore. It’s Edward Moore Kennedy.” Veins bulging, Kennedy managed to contain his rage. When the debate ended, he walked off the stage without shaking McCormack’s hand and muttered, “I’d like to get that guy and punch him in the nose!”

But the Kennedys had ushered in an era of celebrity politics, which trumped qualifications in this case. Mr. Kennedy won the primary by a two-to-one ratio, then went on to easy victory in November against the Republican candidate, George Cabot Lodge, a member of an old-line Boston family that had clashed politically with the Kennedys through the years. Lodge’s great-grandfather had defeated Honey Fitz (JFK’s maternal grandfather) for the Senate and his father had lost the same seat to JFK.

–from the New York Times.

The murder of a 14-year old black boy Emmett Till  in Money, Mississippi in August 1955 sparked the Civil Rights movement, but the crime won’t sound clarion calls for a nation to wake up to if not for the above photo. The gruesome photographs of Till’s mutilated corpse circulated around the country, notably appearing in Jet magazine, which targeted African American crowd. The photo drew intense public reaction. Till, while visiting Mississippi from Chicago, whistled* at a married white woman and incurred the wrath of local white residents.

In the middle of the night, the door to his grandfather’s house was thrown open, and Emmett was taken by the mob of at least six white men, forced into a truck and driven away, never again to be seen alive. Till’s body was found swollen and disfigured in the Tallahatchie river three days after his abduction and only identified by his ring. It was sent back to Chicago, where his mother insisted on leaving the casket open for the funeral and on having people take photographs because she wanted people to see how badly Till’s body had been disfigured—she has famously been quoted as saying, “I wanted the world to see what they did to my baby.” Up to 50,000 people viewed the body.

On the day he was buried, two men — the husband of the woman who had been whistled at and his half brother — were indicted of his murder, but the 12-member all-white male jury (some of whom actually participated in Till’s torture and execution) took only an hour to return ‘not guilty’ verdict. The verdict would have been quicker, remarked the grinning foreman, if the jury hadn’t taken a break for a soft drink on the way to the deliberation room. To add insult to injury, knowing that they would not be retrial, the two accused men sold their stories to LOOK magazine and happily admitted to everything.

Elsewhere in Mississippi too, things weren’t going terribly well for blacks either. Just before Till was murdered, two activists Rev. George Lee and Lamar Smith were shot dead for trying to exercise their rights to vote, and in a shocking testimony to lack of law and order, no one came forward to testify although both murders were committed in broad daylight. The next year, Clyde Kennard, a former army sergeant, tried to enrolled at Mississippi South College in Hatiesburg in 1956. He was sent away, but came back to ask again. For this ‘audacity’, university officials — not students, or mere citizens, but university officials —  planted stolen liquor and a bag of stolen chicken feed in his car and had him arrested. Kennard died halfway into his seven year sentence. But times were slowly a-changing: Brown vs. Board of Education was decided in 1954, and three months after the Till murder took place, Rosa Parks would refuse to move to the back of a bus in Montgomery, Alabama. Sit-ins and marches would follow, and soon the civil rights movement itself would be in fullswing.

(Details were evidently murky: some said he asked Carolyn Bryant out on a date; some said he suggested to her that he had already been with white girls. Some said he showed her a photo of his white girlfriends. Others insist that the photo was that of Hedy Lamarr which came with his wallet.)

In 2003, a pilot Gabriele Adelman and photographer Kenneth Adelman decided to create a site with their photographs from the entire California coastline to document coastal erosion as part of the California Coastal Records Project. They posted photographs of the coastline in front of 12,000 California homes, one of which was of Barbara Streisand’s home. She sued the photographer $50 million citing anti-paparazzi laws.

The judge denied her request for an injunction, and issued an opinion stating that Miss Streisand had abused the legal process by filing the lawsuit, and that the photo was protected by the First Amendment and was not highly offensive to a “reasonable” person. Streisand had to pay Adelman his legal fees, which reportedly exceeded $250,000. In his opinion, the judge noted, Barbra Streisand had “granted reporters interviews in her home, permitted national magazines to publish photos of the home’s interior and its grounds, and opened her home to guests.”

Before the suit, almost nobody had seen Adelman’s website. The lawsuit generated so much attention that millions of people hit his site and the photo was picked up by the AP as newsworthy. The photo was spread over file-sharing networks, blogs, and other systems. Barbara’s tantrum caused the exact opposite effect that she had hoped for. Today, when someone tries to keep information from being distributed and it actually results in that information being massively distributed, the effect is referred to as the Streisand Effect.

The suffragettes did obtain a martyr at the Epsom Derby on 4th June 1913 when Emily Wilding Davison (1872–1913) gave her life for her cause under King George V’s horse Anmer. The circumstances surrounding the incident were unclear on whether it was a suicide or an accidental death. Davison entered the race track (possibly to attach a suffragette flag to the King’s horse) and stepped out in front of the horse.

Instead of stopping, Anmer trampled her, knocking her unconscious. She died in a hospital few days later. Although her detractors had insisted that she had simply intended to cross the track, believing that all horses had passed. However, her record (she went on hunger strike in Strangeways Prison; she threw herself down an iron staircase as a protest at Holloway prison; during 1911 census, she hid in a cupboard in the Palace of Westminster overnight so that on the census form she could legitimately give her place of residence as the “House of Commons”, and in 1913, she planted a bomb at David Lloyd George’s newly home in Surrey), suggested the otherwise. Anmer made a full recovery and made a return to racing. Herbet Jones, the jockey however was so ‘haunted by that woman’s face’ that he eventually committed suicide in 1951. Below, the newspaper headline read: “Anmer rolling over [jockey Herbert] Jones and Emily Davison in the act of falling”.

No matter what her intentions were, Davison’s death marked the end of the radical phase of the woman liberation movement. Her funeral was the last occasion for the suffragettes to display the pomp and circumstance that they had so memorably demonstrated  in earlier rallies. War would soon overshadow all domestic concerns , and for all their anti-establishment fervor, suffragettes channelled their energies into war effort. Emmeline Pankhurst toured the country, this time to give patriotic speeches. Simultaneously, war would prove to be a great catalyst for their movement; as women displaced men in factories and mine, they practically demonstrated abilities and competencies that were denied to them in theory. After the war, they would readily gain the vote.

See a reel of the event here.