Web Finds: Photographs that Changed the World

Life Magazine, established in 1936, was one of the most popular publications that put emphasis on photojournalism. In fact, it was the first all-photography U.S. news magazine. Over the years, Life has published in its pages thousands of photographs from all over the world that captured both the mundane and the profound; both the fleeting and the unforgettable; and both the insignificant and world-changing.

One website I encountered while browsing for Photography (one of my passions) resources is The 100 Photographs that changed the World, as published in Life Magazine. Although the claim that these photographs indeed changed the world is dubious, It cannot be denied that these photos captured the interest of the public all over the world and may in one way or another influenced actions and decisions. Another remarkable site on the same topic is Slate.com's Pictures that Changed the World.

Although the two sites featured less than the supposed 100, the selection of photos presented were undeniably powerful. It's mind-boggling how a simple photo of a wide-eyed, rather plain-looking girl can be called world-changing. But if it's a photo of Anne Frank, one understands. Most of the photos explicitly showed the sordid reality of human folly and its effects.

War, famine, death, terrorism and injustice are condensed into a few photos - from the shocking photo of a dying Igbo child afflicted with a degenerative disease to a photo of a lynching mob looking grotesquely happy while their two black victims hang dead on a tree. As one of the captions says: the images remind us that we have not come as far from barbarity as we’d like to think.

Still, there are positive images that reminds us of the heights we have reached over the last century - from that old photo capturing the moment when the Wright brother's strange contraption realized man's millenia-old dream to fly all in a few seconds, to the amazing image of our planet, shining amidst the pitch black of outer space, captured by astronauts on the moon.

I hope you take the time to check out these two sites and appreciate the value of these images just as I did. The photos may or may not evoke something. Because in the end, the power of a picture is in the mind of the beholder.