Dramatic Photos. NO political comments.

[squigg58]

Originally Posted by Jeff Vader

Is the swan taking the duckling and the parents are naturally going berserk ?

I hope tomesing won't mind me stepping in here, as I simply had to find out what happened to the little gosling!

Apparently, the photo was taken by Felix Buscher, near Munster in Germany. A swan attacked the gosling which had strayed from it's mother. Naturally, the adult geese attacked the swan which then let go of the gosling. The photographer went back later and reported that the gosling was fine.

[squigg58]

I simply had to include one of my all-time favourite photos which shows Capt. Christopher Stricklin ejecting from his F-16 during a display at Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho on the 14th September, 2003.



The pilot incorrectly climbed to 1,670 feet AGL (above ground level) instead of 2,500 feet before initiating the pull-down to a Split-S maneuver. The reason for the error was that Stricklin was used to practicing the routine at Nellis AFB which is 1,000 feet lower than Mountain Home. When Stricklin realized something was wrong, he exerted maximum back stick pressure and rolled slightly left to ensure the aircraft would impact away from the crowd, and ejected eight-tenths of a second before impact. Stricklin suffered only minor injuries.

[Jeff Vader]

Thích Quảng Đức was a Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk who burned himself to death at a busy Saigon road intersection on 11 June 1963. Đức was protesting the persecution of Buddhists by South Vietnam's Roman Catholic government led by Ngô Đình Diệm. Photos of his self-immolation were circulated widely across the world and brought attention to the policies of the Diệm regime. Malcolm Browne won a Pulitzer Prize for his renowned photograph of the monk's death. After his death, his body was re-cremated, but his heart remained intact. This was interpreted as a symbol of compassion and led Buddhists to revere him as a bodhisattva, (heroic-minded one (satva) for enlightenment (bodhi)), heightening the impact of his death on the public psyche.

Đức's act increased international pressure on Diệm and led him to announce reforms with the intention of mollifying the Buddhists. However, the promised reforms were not implemented, leading to a deterioration in the dispute. With protests continuing, the ARVN Special Forces loyal to Diệm's brother, Ngô Đình Nhu, launched nationwide raids on Buddhist pagodas, seizing Đức's heart and causing deaths and widespread damage. Several Buddhist monks followed Đức's example, also immolating themselves. Eventually, an Army coup toppled Diệm, who was assassinated on 2 November 1963.



On 10 June 1963, U.S. correspondents were informed that "something important" would happen the following morning on the road outside the Cambodian embassy in Saigon. Most of the reporters disregarded the message, since the Buddhist crisis had at that point been going on for over a month, and the next day only a few journalists turned up, including David Halberstam of The New York Times and Malcolm Browne, the Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press. Đức arrived as part of a procession that had begun at a nearby pagoda. Around 350 monks and nuns marched in two phalances, preceded by an Austin Westminster sedan, carrying banners printed in both English and Vietnamese. They denounced the Diệm government and its policy towards Buddhists, demanding that it fulfill its promises of religious equality. Another monk offered himself, but Đức's seniority prevailed.

The act itself occurred at the intersection [b] of Phan Đình Phùng Boulevard (now Nguyễn Đình Chiểu Street) and Lê Văn Duyệt Street (now Cách Mạng Tháng Tám Street) a few blocks Southwest of the Presidential Palace (now the Reunification Palace). Đức emerged from the car along with two other monks. One placed a cushion on the road while the second opened the trunk and took out a five-gallon gasoline can. As the marchers formed a circle around him, Đức calmly seated himself in the traditional Buddhist meditative lotus position on the cushion. A colleague emptied the contents of the gasoline container over Đức's head. Đức rotated a string of wooden prayer beads and recited the words Nam Mô A Di Đà Phật ("homage to Amitabha Buddha") before striking a match and dropping it on himself. Flames consumed his robes and flesh, and black oily smoke emanated from his burning body.

Đức's last words before his self-immolation were documented in a letter he had left:
Before closing my eyes and moving towards the vision of the Buddha, I respectfully plead to President Ngô Đình Diệm to take a mind of compassion towards the people of the nation and implement religious equality to maintain the strength of the homeland eternally. I call the venerables, reverends, members of the sangha and the lay Buddhists to organise in solidarity to make sacrifices to protect Buddhism.

David Halberstam wrote:
I was to see that sight again, but once was enough. Flames were coming from a human being; his body was slowly withering and shriveling up, his head blackening and charring. In the air was the smell of burning human flesh; human beings burn surprisingly quickly. Behind me I could hear the sobbing of the Vietnamese who were now gathering. I was too shocked to cry, too confused to take notes or ask questions, too bewildered to even think ... As he burned he never moved a muscle, never uttered a sound, his outward composure in sharp contrast to the wailing people around him.

Police tried to reach him, but could not break through the circle of Buddhist clergy. One of the policemen threw himself to the ground and prostrated himself in front of Đức in reverence. The spectators were mostly stunned into silence, but some wailed and several began praying. Many of the monks and nuns, as well as some shocked passersby, prostrated themselves before the burning monk.

In English and Vietnamese, a monk repeated into a microphone, "A Buddhist priest burns himself to death. A Buddhist priest becomes a martyr." After approximately ten minutes, Đức's body was fully immolated and it eventually toppled backwards onto its back. Once the fire subsided, a group of monks covered the smoking corpse with yellow robes, picked it up and tried to fit it into a coffin, but the limbs could not be bent and one of the arms protruded from the wooden box as he was carried to the nearby Xá Lợi pagoda in central Saigon. Outside the pagoda, students unfurled bilingual banners which read: "A Buddhist priest burns himself for our five requests."

By 1:30 p.m, around one thousand monks had congregated inside to hold a meeting while outside a large crowd of pro-Buddhist students had formed a human barrier around it. The meeting soon ended and all but a hundred monks slowly left the compound. Nearly one thousand monks accompanied by laypeople returned to the cremation site. The police lingered nearby. At around 6:00 p.m, 30 nuns and six monks were arrested for holding a prayer meeting on the street outside Xá Lợi. The police encircled the pagoda, blocking public passage and giving observers the impression an armed siege was imminent by donning riot gear. That evening, thousands of Saigonese claimed to have seen a vision of the Buddha's face in the sky at sunset. They claimed that in the vision the Buddha was weeping.

Political and media impact

Photographs taken by Malcolm Browne of the self-immolation quickly spread across the wire services and were featured on the front pages of newspapers worldwide. The self-immolation was later regarded as a turning point in the Buddhist crisis and a critical point in the collapse of the Diệm regime.

Historian Seth Jacobs asserted that Đức had "reduced America's Diệm experiment to ashes as well" and that "no amount of pleading could retrieve Diệm's reputation" once Browne's images had become ingrained into the psyche of the world public. Ellen Hammer described the event as having "evoked dark images of persecution and horror corresponding to a profoundly Asian reality that passed the understanding of Westerners." John Mecklin, an official from the U.S. embassy, noted that the photograph "had a shock effect of incalculable value to the Buddhist cause, becoming a symbol of the state of things in Vietnam." William Colby, then chief of the Central Intelligence Agency's Far East Division, opined that Diệm "handled the Buddhist crisis fairly badly and allowed it to grow. But I really don't think there was much they could have done about it once that bonze burned himself."

President John F. Kennedy, whose government was the main sponsor of Diệm's regime, learned of Đức's death when handed the morning newspapers while he was talking to his brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, on the phone. Kennedy reportedly interrupted their conversation about segregation in Alabama by exclaiming "Jesus Christ!" He later remarked that "no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one." U.S. Senator Frank Church (D-ID), a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, claimed that "such grisly scenes have not been witnessed since the Christian martyrs marched hand in hand into the Roman arenas."

In Europe, the photos were sold on the streets as postcards during the 1960s, and communist China distributed millions of copies of the photo throughout Asia and Africa as evidence of what it called "US imperialism". One of Browne's photos remains affixed to the sedan in which Đức was riding and is part of a tourist attraction in Huế.


U.S. President John F. Kennedy said that "no news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one."
For Browne and the Associated Press (AP), the pictures were a marketing success. Ray Herndon, the United Press International (UPI) correspondent who had forgotten to take his camera on the day, was harshly criticized in private by his employer. UPI estimated that 5,000 readers in Sydney, then a city of around 1.5–2 million, had switched to AP news sources.

Diệm's English language mouthpiece, the Times of Vietnam, intensified its attacks on both journalists and Buddhists. Headlines such as "Xá Lợi politburo makes new threats" and "Monks plot murder" were printed. One article questioned the relationship between the monks and the press by posing the question as to why "so many young girls are buzzing in and out of Xá Lợi early [in the day]" and then going on to allege that they were brought in for sexual purposes for the U.S. reporters.

Browne's award-winning photograph of Thích Quảng Đức's death has been reproduced in popular media for decades, and the incident itself has been used as a touchstone reference in many films and television programs. Artist Peter Hopkins (1911–1999) painted an anti-war picture in 1964 incorporating Đức's self-immolation into a scene which depicts him at the moment of first flame, with U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara and President Diệm in the background being borne by coolies. The painting, "Ambassador of Goodwill" (C) 1994 M. J. Stutterheim (all rights reserved), can be seen here.

[keefriff]

American Civil War Dead at the Battle of Antietam

Mathew Brady was a pioneering American photographer most famous for his photographs of the American Civil War. His photos of the Battle of Antietam caused a sensation when they were shown at a gallery in New York City in 1862. For many people of the time these were the first "real" depictions of both battle scenes and war dead that they had ever seen. Paintings and other works of art could scarcely show the grimness so evident in Brady's photographs. It was a rude awakening to the brutality and waste of war and it become very clear to most citizens of the time that the American Civil War was going to be a long and bloody affair.

[Jeff Vader]

Jack Ruby shoots Lee Harvey Oswald.



On Sunday, November 24, Oswald was being led through the basement of Dallas Police Headquarters preparatory to his transfer to the county jail when, at 11:21 a.m., Dallas nightclub operator Jack Ruby stepped from the crowd and shot Oswald in the abdomen. Oswald died at 1:07 p.m. at Parkland Memorial Hospital—the same hospital where President Kennedy had died 48 hours and 7 minutes earlier.

A network television camera, there to cover the transfer, was broadcasting live at the time, and millions thereby witnessed the shooting as it happened. The event was also captured in a well-known photograph (see right). Ruby later said he had been distraught over Kennedy's death and that his motive for killing Oswald was "...saving Mrs. Kennedy the discomfiture of coming back to trial." Others have hypothesized that Ruby was part of a conspiracy.

After autopsy, Oswald was buried in Fort Worth's Rose Hill Memorial Burial Park.A marker inscribed simply Oswald replaces the stolen original tombstone, which gave Oswald's full name, and birth and death dates.

[Brecht]

Originally Posted by Jeff Vader

A. Piccard, E. Henriot, P. Ehrenfest, E. Herzen, Th. De Donder, E. Schrödinger, J.E. Verschaffelt, W. Pauli, W. Heisenberg, R.H. Fowler, L. Brillouin;
P. Debye, M. Knudsen, W.L. Bragg, H.A. Kramers, P.A.M. Dirac, A.H. Compton, L. de Broglie, M. Born, N. Bohr;
I. Langmuir, M. Planck, M. Skłodowska-Curie, H.A. Lorentz, A. Einstein, P. Langevin, Ch.-E. Guye, C.T.R. Wilson, O.W. Richardson

Jeff, I wonder if you noticed one man's name missing. Look closer at the picture.

[rotobott]

Originally Posted by Norbert84

Jeff, I wonder if you noticed one man's name missing. Look closer at the picture.

Well spotted, here it is without any pesky time travellers

[Spielemannen]

aftermath of the 2004 indian ocean tsunami

[Jeff Vader]

Burst of Joy



Burst of Joy is a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Associated Press photographer Slava "Sal" Veder, taken on March 17, 1973 at Travis Air Force Base in California. The photograph came to symbolize the end of United States involvement in the Vietnam War, and the prevailing sentiment that military personnel and their families could begin a process of healing after enduring the horrors of war.


POWs leaving the prison camps in North Vietnam left on the American Lockheed C-141 Starlifter strategic airlift aircraft nicknamed the Hanoi Taxi. On March 17th the plane landed at Travis Air Force Base in California. Even though there were only 20 POWs aboard the plane almost 400 family members turned up for the homecoming. Veder was part of big press showing and remembers that, "You could feel the energy and the raw emotion in the air," he said. Veder then rushed to the makeshift photo developing station in the ladies room of the Air Base washrooms, United Press International were in the men's.

The photograph depicts United States Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm being reunited with his family, after spending more than five years in captivity as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam. Stirm was shot down over Hanoi on 27 October 1967, while leading a flight of F-105s on a bombing mission, and not released until 14 March 1973. The centerpiece of the photograph is Stirm's 15-year-old daughter Lorrie, who is excitedly greeting her father with outstretched arms, as the rest of the family approaches directly behind her.

Despite outward appearances, the reunion was an unhappy one for Stirm. Three days before he arrived in the United States, the same day he was released from captivity, Stirm received a Dear John letter from his wife Loretta informing him that their relationship was over. In 1974 the Stirms divorced and Loretta remarried. All of the family members depicted in the picture received copies of it after Burst of Joy was announced as the winner of the Pulitzer Prize. They all display it prominently in their homes, except Stirm, who says he cannot bear to look at it.

About the picture and its legacy, Lorrie Stirm Kitching once noted, "We have this very nice picture of a very happy moment, but every time I look at it, I remember the families that weren't reunited, and the ones that aren't being reunited today — many, many families — and I think, I'm one of the lucky ones."

Donald Goldstein, a retired Air Force colonel and a co-author of a prominent Vietnam War photojournalism book, The Vietnam War: The Stories and The Photographs, says of Burst of Joy, "After years of fighting a war we couldn't win, a war that tore us apart, it was finally over, and the country could start healing.

[Jeff Vader]

Vulture stalking Child



In March 1993, photographer Kevin Carter made a trip to southern Sudan, where he took now iconic photo of a vulture preying upon an emaciated Sudanese toddler near the village of Ayod. Carter said he waited about 20 minutes, hoping that the vulture would spread its wings. It didn’t. Carter snapped the haunting photograph and chased the vulture away. (The parents of the girl were busy taking food from the same UN plane Carter took to Ayod).

The photograph was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993 as ‘metaphor for Africa’s despair’. Practically overnight hundreds of people contacted the newspaper to ask whether the child had survived, leading the newspaper to run an unusual special editor’s note saying the girl had enough strength to walk away from the vulture, but that her ultimate fate was unknown. Journalists in the Sudan were told not to touch the famine victims, because of the risk of transmitting disease, but Carter came under criticism for not helping the girl. ”The man adjusting his lens to take just the right frame of her suffering might just as well be a predator, another vulture on the scene,” read one editorial.

Carter eventually won the Pulitzer Prize for this photo, but he couldn’t enjoy it. “I’m really, really sorry I didn’t pick the child up,” he confided in a friend. Consumed with the violence he’d witnessed, and haunted by the questions as to the little girl’s fate, he committed suicide three months later.

I hate this fuckin photo. Not because of what it shows, a small child probably fated to become a statistic, but because of the bullshit and lies that leads to situations like this.