Iconic Photos

Colin Powell famously used a vial of “anthrax” while trying in vain to win Security Council support for military action in Iraq, but there are times when props have been used a bit more effectively. During a debate over the shooting down of an American U-2 spy plane over Soviet territory on May 20th 1960, U.S. Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge Jnr. decided to go on the offensive.

He accused the Soviet Union of hiding a microphone inside a wood carving of the Great Seal of the United States, which had been presented to the U.S. embassy in Moscow by the Soviet-American Friendship Society. He extracted a tiny microphone out of the eagle’s beak with a pair of tweezers, as Soviet Foreign Minister Andrey Gromyko smiles with amusement and mockery behind Lodge.

“It so happens that I have here today a concrete example of Soviet espionage so that you can see for yourself,” he announced triumphantly. The Soviet resolution condemning the U.S. spy flights was subsequently defeated.

It was perhaps the most controversial cover for LIFE magazine, which usually steered clear of controversy. Paul Schutzers captured this image of a VietCong prisoner gagged and bound, being taken prisoner by American forces during the Vietnam War. Photography and news coverage like this helped to turn the American public against the Vietnam war.

Schutzer, one of LIFE’s best photographers, worked frequently in the Middle East during his short career and there he would perish too: he was killed on assignment on June 5, 1967, the first day of the Six-Day War between Israel and its neighbouring states of Egypt, Jordan, and Syria.

The above color photo of Russian author Leo Tolstoy was taken around 1908 at Yasnaya Polyana estate by Sergei Prokudin-Gorskii, who went around Russia taking color photos with with RGB filters. Prokudin-Gorskii’s over 2,000 Color Photos of Russia (1907-1915) was collected in The Empire That Was Russia: The Prokudin-Gorskii Photographic Record Recreated in the Library of Congress exhibition.

Prokudin-Gorskii’s method meant that three images were combined on a paper mounting and aligned. Each copy took Prokudin-Gorsky two to three days of work time, and it was, of course, expensive, but the results were very durable. He published color inserts in each issue of the Fotograf-Liubitel (An Amateur Photographer), a monthly journal he was Editor-in-Chief of in 1906–1909. In September 1908 issue of Fotograf-Liubitel Prokudin-Gorsky published his above famous photograph of Tolstoy. In the letter to Tolstoy, Gorskii mentioned seeing a terribly-created color photo of the author. However, the above is the only known color photo of the Russian author.

It was in fact the biggest project of Prokudin-Gorsky’s life–one can only imagine the joy of the photographer to be given such an opportunity to capture for posterity (and in color) the grand old man of Russian letters. Taken two year’s before the author’s death in 1910, the image was widely reproduced on postcards and in various publications of the time. This (without forgetting or neglecting his reputation based on his other work on monuments) eventually brought him to the attention of Tsar Nicholas II. Tolstoy would be the inadvertent catalyst for the go ahead of the biggest project of Prokudin-Gorsky’s life.

(l. to. r: the fake picture, the real John Warren, the real Adolf Hitler)

In 1933 a picture supposedly showing Adolf Hitler as a baby began circulating throughout England and America. The child in the picture looked positively menacing–its fat mouth twisted into a sneer, with dark, squinted eyes and a greasy mop of hair. The image was distributed by Acme Newspictures, Inc. and appeared in many newspapers and magazines. In October 1933 the Chicago Tribune printed it alongside a photo of the adult Hitler addressing 500,000 farmers and storm troopers, above the caption, “Two Pictures of Hitler.”

However, the picture did not actually show Hitler; the German consulate in Chicago wrote a letter to the Tribune, sending also a copy of an authentic photograph of Reichs-Chancellor. Subsequent investigation by Acme Newspictures found that the hoax came from the syndicate’s London bureau, through Austria. In 1938, one Harriet Downs of Ohio recognized it as a photo of her son by a former marriage, John May Warren. However, in the original image the son looked cute, bright, and wholesome. An unknown hoaxer had evidently darkened the shadows around the child’s face and also distorted it to give him a more sinister look.

Tragically, the young John Warren died a few months after Acme issued its correction, when he fell from his bicycle and pierced his heart on a milk bottle. Soon, the Second World War would break out and the picture would endure almost a legendary status as the manifestation of evil Hitler. As the Winnipeg Free Press summed it up when it ran the picture, “This is a picture of a man who controls the destiny of a mighty nation, as he appeared when he was not quite one year old. Do you think this photo is prophetic of the figure he has become? The picture is one of Adolf Hitler, who was born in 1889.”

Diane-Lu Hovasse/AFP/Getty Images

Itar / Tass / Reuters

On August 19, 1991, the hardliners of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, led by the then-Vice President Gennady Yanayev, put the pro-reform General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev under house arrest. The party also sent tanks to suppress the people’s revolts for democracy.

At that critical juncture, Boris Yeltsin, President of the Russian Federation, defied the hardliners. He made a speech from the turret of a tank, calling on the military to refrain from firing on the people. The Communist hardliners originally planned to occupy the Parliament at 3 a.m. on August 20, 1991. The plan was aborted after the Alpha Group, an elite unit of the KGB, refused to follow orders. In the defeat of the August Coup, the consciences of KGB agents played an important role–some KGB agents had their weapons aimed at Yeltsin on the tank but refrained from firing.

From the moment he scrambled atop the tank, it was clear Boris Nikolayevich Yeltsin knew how to seize the day. Russia’s first freely elected leader in 1,000 years, he was the man who consigned the Soviet Union to history’s dustbin, and one who drove Russia’s chaotic transformation into a fledgling democracy during the ’90s. To cope, Yeltsin turned to vodka. After lunch during an official visit to Germany in ’94, he snatched the baton from a conductor and began to lead the band. A 1996 bypass operation seemed to check his drinking, but his health remained precarious. Public opinion turned against him as crime flourished and tycoons took control of state assets. By the time he resigned in 1999, the elements of suppression he fought were already returning. When he died in 2008, Bill Clinton remembered, “Fate gave him a tough time in which to govern, but history will be kind to him.”

There was much bad blood between England and Argentina — two powerhouses of world soccer — well before a ball was kicked in anger at the quarterfinals of 1986 World Cup in Mexico. Four years earlier, the two nations had gone to war over the Falkland Islands.

Diego Armando Maradona, Argentina’s greatest-ever player, scored both his side’s goals in the 2-1 victory. For the first, despite appearing to head the ball, the player actually used his fist to loop it over the English goalkeeper. England complained vociferously to the referee, but the goal stood, and it was followed a few minutes later by a second in which Maradona dribbled the ball from the halfway line, passing most of England’s defenders in the process, and slotted it into the net as casually as if he were playing a practice match.

After the match, cocky Maradona said the goal had been scored “un poco con la cabeza de Maradona y otro poco con la mano de Dios” (a little with the head of Maradona and a little with the hand of God). Then the political undercurrents bubbled up, with Maradona claiming that the goal and Argentina’s victory were retribution for his country’s defeat to the English in the Falklands war. “We blamed the English players for everything that happened, for all the suffering of the Argentine people … This was revenge.”

Video and photographic evidence demonstrated that he had struck the ball with his hand, which was shown on television networks and in newspapers all over the world. The goal helped intensify the footballing rivalry between the two nations: Argentina went on to win the World Cup and the English now felt that they had been cheated out of a possible World Cup victory, while the Argentinians enjoyed the manner in which they had taken the lead.

Of all the photos, the above one by Bob Thomas gave a clear view of the incident that the referee had missed.

Victoria came to the British Throne in 1837, largely thanks to her profligate yet legitimately childless uncles, but she nonetheless became the longest reigning British monarch in history. Crowned as the Kaiserin-I-Hind (Empress of India), the Widow of Buckingham–as she was jokingly being called after the death of her husband Albert–ruled over the Empire in which the Sun never set for 64 years.

Victoria presided over what will become known as the Victoria Era, the age of great industrial, intellectual and social developments. She had ten prime ministers in total during her long reign and a rambunctious family, which would break out into petty quarrels and disastrous wars as soon as Victoria was gone.

She was the metaphorical Grandmother of Europe. All her sons and daughters married into nearly all other ruling houses of Europe in dynastic marriages which not only created unlikely alliances in that Age of Empires, but also hemophilia. When Victoria died, her funeral was attended by eleven crowned heads of Europe – all related to her – including the Kaiser of Germany and the Tsar of Russia.

The above photo taken was taken in April 1894 at the Duchy of Hesse-Darmstadt; the occasion was the marriage of Princess Victoria Melita of Edinburgh, the Queen’s granddaughter, to Ernst, the Grandduke of Hesse.  Kaiser Wilhem was seated to the extreme right of the Queen and standing between them were Ernst’s younger sister Alix, whose long delayed engagment to Grandduke Nicholai Alexandrovitch Romanov, the Tsarevitch of Russia, was also announced at this wedding. Nicholai’s father, Alexander III, wanted his son to marry a princess of the House of Oreleans to cement the Franco-Russian Alliance, and only agreed to his betrothal on his deadbed. This meant that Nicholai would ascend to the Russian throne within six months after this picture was taken.

In addition to being a very successful farmer and agri-businessman in Georgia, Jimmy Carter was trained in nuclear physics and served as an officer in the Navy’s nuclear submarine program. However, Carter campaigned in 1976 as a “Washington Outsider”, someone different from the Washington power brokers and he also was not shy about broadcasting that he was a “born again Christian”.

At the Democratic National Convention in New York, he was headed for the final runoff with Rep. Morris Udall of Arizona and Governor Jerry Brown of California. Hundreds of newsmen worked around the clock for the historic convention, and Dirck Halstead, Time magazine’s Washington Bureau photographer, was there too. Halstead, who covered political conventions since 1960, decided to work for one picture only–the ultimate picture when yet-to-be-unveiled presidential and vice-presidential nominees stood on the podium.

The main problem was the 30-foot height of the podium–Halstead had to settle for a position on a cameramen’s platform 500 feet away. Time magazine sent their new super-telephoto lens, but Halstead had to use the extremely slow shutter speed to properly expose the film with the existing light. There was the vibration problem for the platform too–Halstead had to ask the other photographers to remain as motionless as possible when the time came to snap the iconic image.

Carter won the nomination on the first ballot and selected Walter Mondale as his running mate. As the convention ended, the man the public once gave little chance to win the presidency had become a well-known national figure, who would go on to win the election. The cover of the July 26, 1976 issue of Time magazine features Halstead’s slightly blurry photo of Jimmy Carter, his wife, Rosalynn, daughter Amy, as well as Walter Mondale and his wife, Joan, beaming with pride.

Originally from the unglamorous south London suburb of Croydon, teenager Moss was discovered in 1988 at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport. Two years later, topless pictures of the 14-year-old were splashed across billboards amid condemnation of Moss’ waifish appearance, blank stare and emaciated figure. It was the media that fueled Moss’ rise with constant shots of the wide-eyed, 5-foot-6 beauty – and the paparazzi were just as quick to help her fall.

The September 2005 pictures of Moss allegedly snorting cocaine in a London studio with lover Pete Doherty have turned the 31-year-old fashion icon into a pariah, with fashion companies canceling her contracts. First dropping came from the Swedish fashion retailer H&M, followed by Chanel and Burberry. The images were captured during a Daily Mirror undercover investigation which revealed that Moss, who repeatedly denied taking Class As substances such as cocaine, was a seasoned user. She prepared up to 20 lines of coke on the back of a plastic CD cover in just 40 minutes. Moss issued an apology, but stopped short of admitting drug use. Her dramatic fall has forced a re-think on fashion’s role models, and has raised questions about how an industry notorious for its drug-fueled party life can cultivate Moss’ bad-girl image, then turn on her once that image matches reality.

However, she rebounded quickly: Moss continued to appear in major ad campaigns for Dior, and was on the cover of the November 2005 W and also appeared inside in a multi-page fashion shoot. She was also defended by high-profile friends and supporters, including designer Alexander McQueen. who wore a t-shirt saying “We love you Kate” during his walk-out after a fashion show.

President Jacques Chirac of France made cancer research one of his priorities and created a smoking ban in public places. However, before 1988, he himself was a public smoker–there were thousands of pictures showing the young politico enjoying a cigarette, but the above picture has recently become the latest victim of the anti-tobacco zeal that prevails these days in France.

A dangling clope was a trademark of the younger Chirac, as it was of most French stars of the last half century. The picture, which was to cover the first volume of president’s memoirs, is a nice atmospheric shot from the 1980s of the pensive prime minister of the time. It would not have made much sense without the cigarette, but the president’s staff objected to the cigarette, delaying the book’s publication.

Although historic pictures are not covered by the 1991 Evin law, which prohibits “all propaganda or publicity, direct or indirect, in favour of tobacco and its products,” in recent years, smokes and cigarettes have been purged from pictures of Catherine Deneuve, Alain Delon, Jean-Paul Sartre, Albert Camus, Charles de Gaulle, André Malraux, and Jacques Tati.

The Christian Dior perfume company was widely criticised in the spring for removing a cigarette from a 1960s portrait of actor Alain Delon which it is using in a current campaign.

The Paris transport system (RATP) refused to carry film posters of Audrey Tautou starring as Coco Chanel because her character was smoking.

The RATP tried to remove the iconic pipe from the mouth of Jacques Tati’s character, Monsieur Hulot, prompting a full-scale row. They ignominiously replaced it with a papier-mache windmill.

These are the only colour photographs of the German surrender of World War Two. Sixty-Four years earlier there were being taken by a lowly clerk who hid behind a tree, one Ronald Playforth who was General Bernard Montgomery’s clerk since D-Day. The historic items have remained in Mr Playforth’s family ever since but have now been made public for the first time as they are being sold at auction.

In May 1945, the Nazi high command arrived at Montgomery’s HQ at Luneburg Heath, near Hamburg to sign the papers for the surrender of the German armies in Europe. Until now the only images of the momentous occasion in existence are the official black and white ones held by the Imperial War Museum. Playforth was of too low a rank to be present so he crept into the trees and bushes on the perimeter of the HQ tent and took four photographs using colour slides.

His pictures show Admiral Hans Georg von Friedeburg, the most senior member of the delegation, General Eberhard Kinzel, chief of staff of the north west Germany army, and Major Friedl, a 6ft 6ins Gestapo chief. They were received by Field Marshall Montgomery, with his customary black beret and army uniform, who, when the Germans tried to negotiate, reportedly gave them a ‘tongue lashing’ about the bombing of Coventry and the horrors of Belsen. The delegation reported back to their HQ and Admiral Karl Doenitz – Hitler’s successor – and were given permission to sign the surrender papers, which they did the next day, May 4. When it was all over Montgomery is said to have leaned back and said simply: ‘That concludes the surrender.’ Two of the German delegation – Kinzel and Friedeburg – committed suicide weeks later by taking cyanide while Friedl died in a car accident.

Few people know that Scottish physicist James Clerk Maxwell, best known for his development of electromagnetic theory, dabbled in color theory throughout his life, eventually producing the first color photograph in 1861. On the same year that he helped found Edinburgh Photographic Society, he demonstrated his method of developing color films to the Royal Institution in London

It was based on a specification he outlined in a paper to the Royal Society of Edinburgh in 1855. He arranged for three photographs of a tartan ribbon to be taken by the professional photographer, Thomas Sutton.  Each was made using a black+white slide.  These slides were exposed respectively  through red, green and blue filters. He then projected the slides simultaneously using three lanterns, .creating a composite image, which included nearly all of the original colours on the ribbon.

In due process, Maxwell was also able to prove his three-color human vision theory. Newton had proposed that there were four visual primaries: red, yellow, green, and blue. Later, others including Maxwell argued that there were three primaries: red, green, and blue.

Here is also an interesting post on where Maxwell got wrong on this above experiement.