1973 | Coup in Chile

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After three unsuccessful campaigns, Salvador Allende was finally elected in Chile in 1970 — the first Marxist president ever elected democratically anywhere in the world. His subsequent socialist reforms – which included nationalizing factories and agricultural estates, including mines belonging to Anaconda and Kennecott, US copper titans – put him quickly in the crosshairs of the United States.

The U.S. would intervene in Chile in many covert and overt ways to ensure that the Marxist government would fail — denying the country foreign credit, banning sales of spare parts and machinery. This led to the economy collapsing, the inflation skyrocketing and various strikes. The CIA was also backing middleclass business owners to disrupt the government’s plans – such as the October 1972 strike by trucking barons, which blocked the access to the capital Santiago.

By mid-1973, the situation was dire. Allende had survived a coup, and removed military officers from his government – an action that garnered him a censure from the parliament. Country was quickly heading into a constitutional crisis. Two military chiefs who opposed the military intervention in government had been removed (one by assassination, another via a road rage scandal) and the path was clear for the latter general’s successor, Augusto Pinochet, to stage a coup, with backing of the CIA.

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The photos in this post were taken on 11 September, the day of the coup. Allende was photographed, carrying a rifle, talking on the phone (allegedly) with Vice Admiral Patricio Carvajal Prado, one of the putschists (Carvajal would serve as Pinochet’s defense and foreign minister).  A few minutes later, at 9:10 am, Allende made his famous farewell speech on live radio, already speaking of himself in the past tense, of his love for Chile and of his deep faith in its future. 

Immediately afterwards, Allende went around La Moneda, the Presidential Palace, looking for good defense positions. As before, he was surrounded by his Group of Personal Friends (known by the Spanish acronym GAP, Grupo de Amigos Personales), informal armed guard trained and equipped by Cuba and maintained by the Socialist Party for Allende’s protection. Allende wore a metal combat helmet and carried a Soviet-made automatic rifle given to him by Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Those were the last photos ever taken of Allende.

Later in the day, an official announcement was sent out that he had committed suicide. His supporters claimed that he was executed by the generals.

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Who took the photos above had long been disputed, and even when they were taken. It was sometimes alleged that they were from the previous coup attempt, the one that failed.

The photos surfaced four months after the coup, on the front page of The New York Times. The paper’s Latin American correspondent, Marvine Howe, was given the photograph by an intermediary who said the photographer must remain anonymous. When they won the World Press photo award in 1973, the New York Times accepted the award on the unknown photographer’s behalf (Dane Bath of New York Times below).

A few names had been proposed as the photographer, including one mysterious “Davide”. In February 2007, the Chilean newspaper La Nación revealed that the photographer was Luis Orlando Lagos Vásquez, aka “Chico” Lagos, at the time La Moneda’s official photographer.  The World Press photo attributes them to Lagos, as did Iconic Photos in our previous post.

Family of Leopoldo Vargas, another photographer working under Lagos in the official photographer team, claimed that Vargas took these photos.

Vargas recounted that in the photo above of the call between Allende and Prado, the President ended the call with “Do what you want, motherfuckers,” and told Vargas as he stormed out of the room: “Comrade, instead of carrying a camera, you should better carry a machine gun.” 

With both Lagos and Vargas dead now, it is uncertain if this mystery would be resolved.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

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Berlin Airlift | Henry Ries

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“We must have a bad phone connection,” asked General Curtis LeMay, the cigar-chomping, gruff-talking head of Strategic Air Command. “It sounds like you are asking whether we have planes for carrying coal.”

It was June 1948, and on the other end of the call was General Lucius Clay, the military governor of the U.S. Occupation Zone in Germany. Clay confirmed, “Yes, that’s what I said. Coal.”

LeMay, later the inspiration for the pugnacious and unreasonable Buck Turgidson in Stanley Kubrick’s Dr. Strangelove, answered gruffly after a long pause, “The Air Force can deliver anything.”

Thus began the Berlin Airlift — two days after the Soviets had imposed a blockade on the city which was in their occupied zone to force the Allied occupying powers out.

What Clay had in mind was unthinkable — supplying 2.25 million people with food and fuel by air indefinitely. Initially, it began haphazardly. A “cowboy” operation, unauthorized by the higher-ups (President Truman only later approved the mission). The U.S. Air Force, after all, was a military organization without much experience in running transport and cargo operations. Yet, under the command of Maj. Gen. William Tunner, it became a streamlined and coordinated effort and an incredible feat of logistics.

At the peak of the airlift, cargo planes landed at Tempelhof every four minutes around the clock, and the daily tonnage of food and supplies brought into Berlin by the planes exceeded the amount of material that had been brought in by trains before the blockade. It was a defining moment that won the hearts and minds of the occupied and defeated Germans.

During a landing at Tempelhof, a pilot named Gail Halvorsen befriended the starving children who played around the airfield. Halvorsen, who had personal reservations about the airlift, grew up poor during the Great Depression and empathized with the children. He handed the children two sticks of gum and told them to come back the next day when he planned to airdrop more sweets from his plane. He would wiggle the wings of his aircraft so they would know it was him, he told the children.

Thus began the story of a man remembered in Germany as Der Schokoladen Flieger, the Chocolate Flyer. Not only did he live up to his promise, but Halvorsen also asked other pilots to donate their candy rations, and he had his flight engineer rock the airplane during the drop. More and more children showed up to catch his airdrops, and letters arrived requesting special airdrops at other points in the city.

It was against the rules, but when an Associated Press story appeared under the headline “Lollipop Bomber Flies Over Berlin,” Halvorsen’s superiors realized the PR opportunity. Candy and handkerchief donations arrived from all over America following the AP story (candy was dropped using handkerchiefs as miniature parachutes), and Halvorsen was dubbed Uncle Wiggly Wings in the press. Now officially sanctioned as ‘Operation Little Vittles’, dozens of pilots dropped more than 21 tons of candy in 250,000 small parachutes across Berlin.

The Soviets would soon recognize the futility of the airlift, but the standoff would ultimately last fifteen months. President Truman would use the crisis to his advantage and win an upset reelection victory, while his Secretary of Defense would descend into madness in the midst of an escalating crisis. All in all, when the airlift ended, the United States, Britain, and France had flown 278,228 flights altogether to supply isolated West Berlin.

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Operation Little Vittles was immortalized in a photo which had become as iconic as the candy bombers themselves — and later featured on posters and commemorative stamps.

The photo was taken by Henry Ries, a Berlin-born Jew who fled Nazi Germany and migrated to the United States before the war. He first arrived in the United States in 1937 but was sent back due to improper immigration papers. However, he was able to emigrate the following year and began selling vacuum cleaners to make a living. In 1943, he joined the U.S. Army as an aerial photographer and worked first in the Pacific theater, then in Europe. After the war, Ries returned to Germany and used images of mundane life to contrast the darkness of war’s aftermath.

Another famous Ries photo, titled ‘Germany’s future swings in front of Germany’s past,’ depicted children at an amusement park ride in Lustgarten in the shadow of the bombed-out ruin of Königliches Schloss, the seat of the last German Kaiser.

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Ries’ photos put into images the thundering words of Berlin’s Lord Mayor Ernst Reuter, the symbol of the Free Berlin. On September 1948, Reuter gave a speech in front of the burned-out Reichstag building, facing a crowd of 300,000 where he appealed to the world not to abandon Berlin — a moment also captured by Ries (above).

Reuter pled, “Ihr Völker der Welt … Schaut auf diese Stadt und erkennt, dass ihr diese Stadt und dieses Volk nicht preisgeben dürft, nicht preisgeben könnt!” (People of this world… look upon this city and see that you should not, cannot abandon this city and this people).

Ries’ photos complemented these words and shone a light on the plight of the defeated Germans, and their struggling lives: a woman ironing while her family slept in the same room; hardened black market traders; emaciated women returning from markets and rummaging in the streets for fuel; citizens planting modest vegetable gardens in the Tiergarten; ethnic Germans expelled from Silesia (surrendered to Poland after the war) and released prisoners of war. In his photo of poor market on Wittenbergplatz in front of the completely destroyed Kaufhaus des Westens, emaciated women offer pitiful bundles of herbs for sale and a man repairs a tattered shoe. 

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

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Pope John Paul in Managua

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There was the weightiness of history to the moment above. Canossa perhaps or the memories of the papacies of the Renaissance and the Inquistion perhaps. A pope wagging finger at a kneeling man on the airport tarmac.

It was 1983 and Pope John Paul II was in Managua — on his first visit to Nicaragua. The kneeling priest was Ernesto Cardenal, who was then serving as the Minister of Culture in the country’s Sandinista government.

Although the Church played a major role in the fall of the Somoza regime in Nicaragua, it was split on its successors, with Archbishop Miguel Obando y Bravo of Managua leading sharp critics of the Sandinistas, and younger liberation theology priests like Cardenal joining the Sandinistas’ Marxist-Leninist revolution. For years, there was an ongoing feud of words and sometimes physical intimidation between two factions of the church.

The pope wasn’t there for a reconciliation. Even before his visit, the pope had been publicly demanding that Father Cardenal and four other priests (including his brother Fernando Cardenal, then education minister) resign their government positions. The Sandinistas also refused the Vatican’s demand to replace them, but insisted that its invitation to the pope still stood.

The pope, as equally minted as the Sandinistas (both had come to power in that pivot year of 1979), was undaunted by this defiance. But as he walked down the receiving line at the airport, decorated with a banner that said “Welcome to Free Nicaragua – Thanks to God and the Revolution,” he was still taken aback to see the priests (the Vatican had specificed that none of the priest-ministers should appear in the welcoming party) and especially Cardenal. Unlike other priests in clerical garb, he had showed up wearing a collarless white shirt, slacks and his signature black beret over his thick white hair. When he knelt to kiss the papal ring, the pope withheld his hand and wagged his finger at him.

His subsequent scolding was not audible, but the moment was broadcast around the world and the photo above was on the frontpage of newspapers. It was later recounted that the pope told Father Cardenal, “You must regularize your position with the church. You must sort out your affairs with the church.”

It was to be a challenging visit for the pope.

Later that day Sandinista supporters heckled him at mass when he asked the citizenry to reject the “popular church” that is allied with the revolutionary government and to accept the absolute authority of the Vatican. The Sandinistas partisans who were strategically placed at the head of the crowd of about 350,000 began replied by chanting: “One church on the side of the poor!” and “We want peace!” The Pope countered combatively. “Silencio!” he commanded – and then twice more until the hecklers were cowed.  

At the end of the Mass, the Sandinistas played their anthem, after which the pope was driven back to the airport, where he was again greeted by the junta supremo Daniel Ortega (in glasses on the left in photo above), who reproached him for not praying for seventeen youths killed by the US-backed rebels, known as the Contras and defended the behavior of the Sandinistas during the Mass.

The pope left, insulted.

For the pope, brought up in Soviet Poland, Marxism was an existential evil. He returned to the Vatican in a combatively mood. On his next major trip, three motnhs after Nicaragua, he returned to Poland to denounce the government there as running “one great concentration camp”. He would also soon suspend Cardenal and other priests from the priesthood — the ban that would not be lifted until three decades later — and put the founding father of liberation theology, the Peruvian priest Gustavo Gutiérrez, under investigation by the Vatican’s guardian of doctrinal orthodoxy, the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith.

“Christ led me to Marx,” Cardenal reflected in an interview in 1984. “I don’t think the pope understands Marxism. For me, the four gospels are all equally communist. I’m a Marxist who believes in God, follows Christ, and is a revolutionary for the sake of his kingdom.”

On his second trip to Nicaragua in 1996, the pope referred to the earlier visit: “I remember the celebration of 13 years ago; it took place in darkness, on a great dark night.” By then, the Sandinistas were gone. They had been subjected to the widespread violence from the Contras, and were finally thrown out in a general election in 1990, also marred by massive America interference. Cardenal left his government office in 1987, having fallen out with the junta’s head, Daniel Ortega, and when Ortega returned to power in 2007, he would condemn the government as a thieving monarchy.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

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1944 | Vienne Execution

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After France was liberated from the Nazis in 1944, a wave of retributions swept through the country. Nazi collaborators and Gestapo informers were denounced; women suspected of having relationships with Germans were publicly humiliated by having their heads shaved; those engaged in the black market activities were labeled as “war profiteers” and trialed.

In the first fevered phase (remembered as épuration sauvage or wild purge, as opposed to later legal purges, épuration légale), one estimate noted that six thousand people were summarized executed for collaboration before the liberation of France, and four thousand thereafter. members and leaders of the milices. The US Army’s estimates were higher: eighty thousand, and one source even reported that the number executed was 105,000.

One such execution was well documented by Jean-Philippe Charbonnier in the village of Vienne, near Grenoble. Charbonnier spent a single roll of 35mm film to document the entire story of the public execution of a Nazi collaborator in front of a crowd of five thousand people. Each shot built up to the death by firing squad of a minor official who had possibly worked for the Gestapo with documentary and cinematic precision, beginning with the man being tied to a post, soldiers with rifles preparing for the task, then ultimately killing him.

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Charbonnier remembered the day and the legal and moral ambiguities of that day:

In October, 1944, in the small town of Vienne (Isere), France, a French collaborator named Nitard was sentenced to death.

He was no large-scale spy — just a man who had been working as a clerk in the German administration, probably for the Gestapo. But one must remember that in the early days of Liberation in France, as in any other country that had suffered four years’ occupation, feelings ran high against any collaborator, big or small. And then, of course the really dangerous collaborators were not easy to bring to justice so the small fry had to pay the price for their more fortunate partners-in-crime. More fuel to the fire had been the executions by the Germans of many great patriots both in Lyons and in Vienne.

The outcry was therefore so violent that, even though Nitard’s appeal to the Courts of Justice in Grenoble had been successful, the shooting was ordered to take place, so as not to disappoint the population of Vienne, I cannot help feeling.

So that everyone in the town should have a chance to watch the execution and share in the general revenge, it was scheduled to take place at noon. Five thousand people, children included, crowded into the square in front of the old military barracks. So intense was the excitement that one could almost smell it as one can before a bullfight or even a good football game, while in the barrack square the condemned man gulped back the traditional glass of rum and lit the traditional cigarette. He puffed at it a few times, then stubbed it out, thrust the butt into his pocket and went to face the firing-squad.

He passed through a hall where the twelve rifles, one with a blank cartridge, had been laid out ready, and walked out into the square to be met by a priest, the firing-squad, its commanding officer and the now strangely silent crowd.

This demonstration of public justice shocked me profoundly. No one deplored collaboration more than I but this punishment seemed to me to be out of all proportion to this man’s relatively small crime. My nerves were taut. This man who was about to die was so close. I don’t remember whether the crowd was silent now, or not. I only know that I set my Leica automatically, as in a dream … or rather, a nightmare. Subconscious reflexes turned my battered old Summar F2 lens to the closest possible range while I tried to fight off feelings of disgust.

Suddenly I felt very close to that man standing alone in the square. The cigarette butt. Injustice to humanity. And then the overwhelming feeling that the man was dead already, that he was like a duck with its head cut off that runs for minutes before finally falling dead. He was dead before he ever entered the “arena” — even after fifteen years I can’t stand using that word.

The “show” was reaching its climax but now the man was untied from the post. He was a traitor and traitors are not given the right to meet death facing the squad. The seconds ticked by as he was bound with his back to the rifles. And then they fired.

Nitard never saw me although I was at times no more than five feet away. The whole story took up just one 35mm roll, as you can see — the biggest, most compact story I ever covered and one I wish never to have to cover again.”

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

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Coronation of George V

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Ahead of Charles III’s coronation this weekend, we look back at the first time cameras were allowed inside the Westminster Abbey

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George V’s coronation in 1911 had several ‘firsts’: the first to use the newly developed processional route through the Mall and Whitehall; the first to be followed by a thanksgiving service at St Paul’s Cathedral; the first with the iconic balcony appearance by the king — and most importantly, the first to be photographed from inside the abbey.

The honor fell to Sir John Benjamin Stone, a former MP and amateur photographer, who was earlier also entrusted by George V to photograph intimate portraits, such as his late father Edward VII’s coffin in the royal vault.

Despite the king’s wishes, Stone wasn’t welcomed by everybody. The illustrated news magazines of London dismissed his blurry photos of ceremony as inferior to sketches produced by their eyewitness artists, and the formidable Randall Davison, then in the seventh year of a tenure that would make him the longest serving Archbishop of Canterbury since the Reformation, insisted that the photographer and his camera be “in a position absolutely concealed”. As such, Stone’s photo of the king on the coronation chair (above) was almost blocked.

The royal couple both complained about the coronation. “The service in the Abbey was most beautiful, but it was a terrible ordeal,” wrote George V in his journal, while Queen Mary wrote to her aunt, “it was an awful ordeal for us both.”

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In the front row of the Royal Box behind the king, from left to right, were four of his six children (1. Princess Mary; 2. Prince Albert, the future George VI; 3. Prince Henry, the future Duke of Gloucester; 4. Prince George, the future Duke of Kent), his sister (5. the then Princess Royal, Duchess of Fife), and three of his aunts, all daughters of Queen Victoria (6. Princess Christian of Scheswig-Holstein; 7. Princess Louise, Duchess of Argyll; 8. Princess Henry of Battenberg). The young princes would fight on the way back to the palace: the 11-year-old Henry wrestling the 8-year-old George, nearly knocking Princess Mary’s coronet out of their carriage.

Sitting behind the king’s children were the Connaughts and the Albanys — the wives and daughters of the king’s uncles. From left to right, 1. The Duchess of Connaught; 2. The Duchess of Albany; 3. Princess Patricia (a daughter of Duke of Connaught); and 4. Princess Alexander of Teck (a daughter of Duke of Albany and married to the Queen’s brother).

On the king’s right, four men carrying swords of state were visible. They were, left to right, 1. Field Marshal Lord Kitchner of Khartoum, carrying the sword of temporal justice; 2. Duke of Beaufort, bearing curtana (also known as the Sword of Mercy); 3. Field Marshal Lord Roberts of Kandahar, former Commander-in-Chief of the Army, carrying the sword of spiritual justice; and bearing the unwieldy Sword of State, William Lygon, Lord Beauchamp (often thought to be the model for the character Lord Marchmain in Evelyn Waugh’s Brideshead Revisited).

Visible behind Beauchamp in his military dress was Captain Charles Cust, equerry to the king, who would be a confidante of three kings.

Between the king and the queen were the other officials who held ceremonial roles. From left to right, 1. the Viscount Churchill, one of the bearers of the king’s train; 2. the Bishop of Bath and Wells; 3. the Earl of Carrington; and 4. the Bishop of Durham. On the other side of the queen was the Bishop of Petersborough. Behind the queen were the bearers of her six-yard long train, led by Evelyn Cavendish, the Duchess of Devonshire and Mistress of the Robes — the senior lady in the Royal Household.

Lord Carrington, the future Marquess of Lincolnshire, bore St Edward’s Staff and held the role of Lord Great Chamberlain. The role rotates with every change of reign between three families: the others being the Cholmondeleys and the Willoughby de Eresbys (the Earls of Ancaster). For Charles III’s coronation, it will be turn of another Carrington.

Bishops of Durham and Bath and Wells acted as Bishops Assistant to the King — a role that existed since the coronation of Edgar in 973, and had been carried out by the holders of those two bishoprics since the coronation of Richard I in 1189.

(You can compare Stone’s photos to the almost identical coronation painting by John Henry Frederick Bacon. Bacon was placed hidden from view behind the tombs of Aymer de Valence and Aveline of Lancaster, directly facing the Royal Box, and he used artistic licence to produce a clear view of the king in profile and the queen facing the viewer).

Formula One Fire | 1994

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Refueling in the pit lane and Formula One has a complicated relationship since 1982 when Brabham team discovered that a faster race time could be achieved when starting a car with only half a tank of fuel.

The sport’s governing authorities banned refueling in 1984 – but relented in 1994, to introduce more variability and excitement into the sport: for instance, a driver unable to pass another on the track can overtake him by clever pit lane tactics (e.g., time, new tire hardness, fuel tank weight).

The reintroduction would lead to a disaster almost immediately at the German Grand Prix at Hockenheim, when petrol sprays on to the car of Dutch driver Jos Verstappen during refueling and the Benetton Ford pit erupted into a ball of flames. It was a spectacular fireball – despite less than three liters of fuel being spilt out – but was quickly put out. Verstappen ejected himself out of the car rapidly. He and five mechanics were taken to hospital and treated for burns, but no one was seriously injured. A subsequent investigation traced the fire to a fuel value that was slow to close and elimination of a filter to stop fires, to increase the flow of fuel into the car and save crucial 1-second per pit stop.

The drama of the moment was perfectly captured in the photo above of a pit crew member, Paul Seaby, making his escape from the fire. Photographer Steven Tee, working for Motorsport Images, remembers:

“I went into the Benetton garage and they were getting ready for the pitstop, so I shot it from where I was standing, just out the front.

I was snapping away and I noticed something, some fuel spilling, but didn’t pay too much attention. Then I went from seeing Jos in the car with the mechanics around him, to literally like a big orange ball. But I kept shooting.

As soon as it happened I could see the mechanics running back towards the garage, and some of them were on fire. I retreated a bit to get out of the way and then thought no more of what I had taken, as those days we were shooting on film.

We dropped the films in as usual on the Sunday night in London, and came in very early to do an edit for Motoring News. I went through the frames. There were two frames that were completely out of focus, but you could see the fuel spillage. The next frame was an out-of-focus Paul Seaby, and the next frame was out-of-focus Paul Seaby.

But the third frame was the one that has become quite famous – which is basically him completely enveloped in flames, pin sharp coming away from it. It looks like it should be a still from a movie!

There was another angle of the fire that someone had taken from the pitwall, and that got used quite a lot in the newspapers, but it didn’t have as much impact as this one of Seaby.

Paul and I have joked about it over the years. I’ve given him some big prints, and at some point the image ended up on a load of beer mats somewhere! It has been used all over the place. It is a constant reminder to him.

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Amazingly, Seaby survived the accident with only minor burns. A few fires and near disasters followed throughout the 90s and the 2000s before the sports reconsidered banning refueling. In aftermath of the 2009 financial crisis, Formula 1 decided to cut down costs of storing, transporting, and caring for F1 car fuel and ban refueling altogether in 2010, allowing for slightly enlarged fuel tanks.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos

Currently there is a poll there re: A.I. photo generation: What sort of iconic photos / images from past eras you want to see? In which photographer’s style? Please go and comment. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/poll-iconic-by-i-80820823)

Three Communists

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Often reprinted in Laos and Vietnam was the image above – that of Laotian Communist leader Kaysone Phomvihane with Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese revolutionary. The photo was never reprinted in its entirely in Laos and Vietnam – both still nominally communist – to include the third person present during that 1966 meeting: Pol Pot, the head of the Communist Party of Cambodia.

It was as if both countries were ashamed of their former relationships with Pol Pot.

The image above was the stamp from 2002, celebrating 40th Anniversary of diplomatic relations between Laos and Vietnam — tellingly the cigarette from Ho’s hand had been excised too.

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In February 8th, 1966, when the photo was taken, Ho Chi Minh was 77-year old. His health, which was never robust, was failing and he had slowly turned over many of his ruling responsibilities to other party grandees. Ho, son of a minor palace mandarin, had been the boss of the Communist Party of Vietnam for over 35 years. His singular achievement: running it without a major purge. Between its formation in 1945 and 1967 (when a member died), the Party’s Politburo was ran by the same eleven men.

Something that could not be said of ruling elites in China or Soviet Union – nor in neighboring Cambodia and Laos.

The 1966 meeting was a fraught and pivotal moment. The communist parties in Laos and Cambodia were still struggling to mobilize and the Vietnam War was in a stalemate. Ho had a little over than two years to live, but the communist movements would endure a bitter decade to finally prevail. In 1975, with the American support for the war in Indochina flagging, Pathet Lao in Laos, Khmer Rouge in Cambodia, and North Vietnam would all emerge victorious.

This was the moment that the western powers had feared throughout the 1950s and the 1960s – that Communism in Vietnam would lead to domino effect first in Laos and Cambodia, and then spread to Thailand, Malaysia, and Indonesia. But soon, Vietnam would invade Cambodia and China would invade Vietnam – allaying the fears about a monolithic communist bloc taking over South East Asia.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos

Currently there is a poll there re: A.I. photo generation: What sort of iconic photos / images from past eras you want to see? In which photographer’s style? Please go and comment. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/poll-iconic-by-i-80820823)

Woodstock ’69

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The whole world was there. At least it appeared to be — and later would claim to be.

From August 15th to 17th 1969, the largest rock festival in American history was undergoing at Bethel, New York. The name ‘Woodstock’ would soon enter into cultural memory, but back then, it was simply the name of a nearby town where the promoters had originally planned the festival to be. The town (where Bob Dylan then lived) had denied them a permit.

The town was right to be apprehensive — it didn’t want any gathering larger than 5,000 people, and the organizers had expected ten times that time. Actually, a hundred times that number — half a million people — showed up (publicity partly drummed up by the news that Woodstock had banned the festival).

Among the attendees was Burk Uzzle, formerly a staff photographer at Life, then freelancing for Magnum. Several papers asked him to cover the festival, but Uzzle turned them down. The photographer who would turn 31 on the weekend of Woodstock didn’t want editors dictating to him, and instead decided to visit the festival as a freelancer with his family. He carried two Leicas — one with a normal lens, the other with a medium-wide lens, and as much film as he could stuff into his pockers — 15 rolls.

He had planned for a daytrip to the festival, but was stuck there: he was told that the highway had been shut down due to crowds (At least that was what Arlo Guthrie told the crowd, “the New York State Thruway is closed man.” In fact, the state police never closed it off. It was just jammed from traffic). It was a wet muddy weekend and the family stayed in a makeshift shelter they made by attaching a poncho to a barbed-wire fence. Uzzle realized that he was better off taking photos of the audience, rather than elbow through the crowds to take pictures of musicians performing — something all of his colleagues on assignment were trying to do.

On Sunday, Uzzle woke up at 4.30 a.m and walked around. The photo he took that morning of a hippie couple wrapped in a tight embrace would become an iconic picture not only of the festival but also of a generation. Uzzle remembered:

“It was a hard decade: assassinations, riots, Washington. My archive is full of really bad stuff. And then you get to Woodstock, and here are all the hippies that everyone thought were going to ruin the world, but these people decided to look after each other.”

The bedraggled and blanketed couple would come to symbolize the entire generation known for “beads, beads, blossoms and bells, blinding strobe lights and ear-shattering music, exotic clothing and erotic slogans,” in the words of Time magazine, which devoted a 1967 cover story to the hippies and the “flower power”. For historian Arnold Toynbee, they presented “a red warning light for the American way of life”.

Ironically Nick Ercoline and Bobbi Kelly, both 20, were not hippies. Bobbi was working at a bank and Nick had a construction job. Living near Bethel in Middletown, N.Y., they were aware of the Woodstock controversy — the permits, the tickets, the last minute change of venue — but only decided at the last minute to go. The couple had been dating for less than ten weeks. They would only stay for one night and never saw the stage because they were so far away (in contrast to Uzzle’s family, which arrived early and had prime spots).

Uzzle took a few frames in black and white before switching to color. He remembered:

I walk up and I know the curvature of the hill has to work with the curvature of the heads. And there’s the flag, it’s going to have to be there, and just enough of the people.”

Very slow shutter speed, almost dark, holding myself very still, maybe a 15th of a second, and I was lucky that it was still sharp. But I was not high! So I was able to make the composition and be in focus and take the picture. And then I turned around to find something else to shoot.”

Jefferson Airplane played on stage.

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The photo would be on 3-LP Woodstock album released the next year. A friend of Nick and Bobbi bought the album, and they recognized the orange and yellow butterfly. “Then we saw the blanket. Oh, my lord, that’s us!” The couple had picked it up from the street where other festival goers had abandoned their belongings.

Nick and Bobbi got married two years later and were still together until Bobbi’s death in 2023.

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The festival attracted famous names: Crosby, the Who, Grateful Dead, Janis Joplin to name a few. Jimi Hendrix was the closing act (although many didn’t see it as it took on Monday morning) but Bob Dylan refused to turn up (the famously grumpy singer was living a reclusive life in Woodstock and didn’t want more people to turn up to his town; he pointedly traveled to U.K a few weeks later to headline for a festival there).

Although it took years for the organizers to profit from Woodstock, it marked the beginning of the commercialization of music on a large scale. The organizers, Woodstock Ventures Inc., was a coolly calculated operation which took care to meticulously and professionally document the festival in sound and film, ensuring a steady stream of income for the next decade with ongoing marketing (one of the editors on the Oscar-winning documentary Woodstock (1970) was young Martin Scorsese) and anniversary festivals, culmulating with the disastrous Woodstock ’99. In that context, the above picture was used (in both black and white and in color), and reproduced on millions of record covers.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

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Currently there is a poll there re: A.I. photo generation: What sort of iconic photos / images from past eras you want to see? In which photographer’s style? Please go and comment. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/poll-iconic-by-i-80820823)

Indochina by Taizo Ichinose

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The haunting photo above showed the road leading to Angkor Thom – covered in detritus from the forest and devoid of any trace of people, except for a solitary human spine.

It was taken by Taizo Ichinose, a Japanese photographer, whose ambition to capture images of the Angkor Wat while the temple was controlled by the Khmer Rouge soldiers (and subsequently be featured on the front page of the New York Times).

The then 26-year old started out as a freelance photographer to cover the war in East Pakistan, before being sucked into the quagmire that was Vietnam War. There, his photo above of a South Vietnamese soldier diving for safety as mortar round fired by communist guerrillas blew up a truck loaded with ammunition, became UPI’s Photo of the Month in August 1972.

Diving for Safety

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Throughout 1972 and 1973, Taizo crisscrossed the Mekong River between Phnon Penh and Saigon, covering the communist forces that were ascendant and soon to be victorious in both countries (Diving for Safety was taken mere 45 miles outside of Saigon). He snuck in and out of Cambodia, once under the pretext of being a boxing teacher, covering the battles between the pro-American Khmer Republic of Marshal Lon Nol and the communist Khmer Rouge forces.

He had close calls. In October 1972, he was hit by a rifle bullet, and the fragments of a grenade that exploded nearby destroyed his Nikon camera. Taizo suffered only minor injuries to his right hand. The camera, which he took back to Japan, became a centerpiece of many retrospectives on his work (below).

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He told a friend, “one step on a mine, and it’s all over”. Macabre perhaps, but not too surprising, considering that many reporters and photographers had perished similarly in jungles and rice fields of Vietnam – all the way back to Robert Capa in 1954.

When Ichinose met his end, however, it was not on a landmine. He was likely executed by the Khmer Rouge, sometime in late 1973. It was not entirely clear how and when he was killed, but his later-recovered diary and eyewitness accounts from neighboring villagers stated that he was arrested by Khmer Rouge troops during a battle and via an interpreter, found out that he was journalist.

His disappearance made headlines across the world, and his parents kept the search going. The Japanese Ministry of Foreign Affairs managed to track down his film negatives in the subsequent years (including the color one of the pinecone towers of Angkor Wat from the distance, known in the exhibit above), and his remains were eventually found in 1982.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos

Currently there is a poll there re: A.I. photo generation: What sort of iconic photos / images from past eras you want to see? In which photographer’s style? Please go and comment. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/poll-iconic-by-i-80820823)

Decisive Moments by A.I.

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(For A.I. poll, please go here.)

For years it has been in development, but in recent months, there has been remarkable breakthroughs in artificial intelligence — especially in the field of generative AI, that enables machines to create text and images.

The operative word is create. AI creates. It doesn’t provide facts, will lie with brazeness of a politician, and doubledown on mistakes (e.g. 1+1 = 3). But its artistic abilities are great. You can ask AI to write a James Bond script, paint Spongebob in style of Van Gogh, or compose an ode to Einstein in iambic pentameter.

So it can paint. Can it take photos in a style of a particular photographer. This is a tricky terrain since AI-generated images can still look surreal, dreamlike, and artificially lit — not a bad thing for paintings but can be tricky for photos, where you can end up with uncanny valley.

I set out to explore.

I use Henri Cartier-Bresson — partly because he was arguably the most famous and accessible photojournalist of last century (meaning there’s a lot of photos by him as reference material) and he has a distinctive style and visual elements that AI can learn to recognize. (Midjourney maintains a training set of photographers).

  • [February 2022] China. AI cannot generate legible text. I think lower righthand corner is supposed to be an eunuch, common in many of HCB’s China photos, but the figure is contorted. Faces are also contorted.
  • [March 2022] Tokyo Market. Composition here is reminiscent of some of his photos but figures are definitely surreal
  • [October 2022] Train Station, Europe. This one is saved by the fact that faces are not shown. The rundown train station and the crowd is more reminiscent of Yevgeny Khadei. Feet, perspective, and some of the details are wrong.
  • [March 2023] Woman at Computer. This looks like a photo spread you probably could have seen in LIFE magazine back in the day. Significant improvement from a year ago.
  • [March 2023] Woman at Computer. Likewise here. See details on the ground and the dust in the foreground, although background renders are a bit wonky.
  • [March 2023] Africa, 1960. These last photos are probably the best renderings of faces. Once again, more James Natchway than Bresson, but impressive.
  • [March 2023] Japanese sea food market, redux. Significant improvement against September results. Faces still not optimum.
  • [March 2023] Paris Street. Great photos. Reminded me of Robert Doiseau.

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So what’s the verdict?

Even the current photos don’t look that realistic, but it has made huge improvements in last 4-6 months. I cannot imagine what it can do in 2-3 months’ time.

Copying the style of one photographer seems to be the more challenging part. Unlike van Gogh or Leonardo or Turner, the style of a photographer can be hard to pin down, when many photographers may use similar framings, similar cameras and settings, and the same photographer will use different cameras and settings.

For me, I have tried to generate some of the photos above using these settings: “Leica M10 Monochrom. ISO 400, f/4, 1/125s, 35mm”.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Currently there is a poll there on:

What sort of iconic photos / images from past eras you want to see? In which photographer’s style? Please go and comment. (https://www.patreon.com/posts/poll-iconic-by-i-80820823)

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos

Poolside Gossip | 1970

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You have probably seen it. In bars, in restaurants, on walls of hotel lobbies. The photo of two attractive women sitting in lounge chairs next to a pool and a modern house. Gray and purple mountains in the background.

Slim Aarons, a society photographer in Los Angeles, took the photo in 1970. The house in question was Kaufmann House in Palm Springs, one of the most famous examples of California modernism — the house that helped establish Palm Springs as centre for modernist architecture. Designed in 1946 by Austrian-American architect Richard Neutra, the house originally belonged to department store tycoon Edgar J. Kaufmann Sr., who also commissioned Fallingwater from Frank Lloyd Wright.

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In 1970, the house belonged to Joe and Nelda Linsk, Philadelphia clothing manufacturers (Nelda, a Texan model, was a buyer for Linsk of Philadelphia, before marrying the boss). In addition to Aarons, who lived just down the street, their neighbors then included Kirk Douglas, Jack Benny, Natalie Wood and Robert Wagner, Tony Curtis and Janet Leigh and Lucy and Desi Arnaz. Mrs. Linsk remembers:

It was about 11 in the morning. Slim called us. He knew our house was a Neutra. He said: “I want to come over and do a pool shot. Call some friends over.”

It was so casual. He came with his tripod. The shoot was about an hour and a half. We had champagne and socialized for an hour or two afterward. It was a fun day. I had no idea it would become that famous. I wish I had royalties.  

There were no makeup or wardrobe people. Slim said, “Pull something out of your closet.” Our house was done in yellow: the umbrellas were yellow, the flowers yellow. So I thought I’d wear something yellow. My outfit was in yellow terry cloth. I had on palazzo pants. Helen showed up in that fabulous white lace. She looked so glamorous!

Both of our outfits were bare midriff. We both had big hair. In those days, you had big hair.

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The other women in the photo were Helen Dzo Dzo, who was then married the architect Hugh Kaptur and walking alongside the pool, Lita Baron, an actress. For the 45th anniversary of the photo, the women returned to the Kaufmann House to restage the iconic photo.

The house sold for $13.06 million in 2022.

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If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to monthly addenda posts on Patreon, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos

Blog Announcement

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Normally Iconic Photos don’t reveal talk about current affairs photos.

But on Patreon, I will start sharing short pieces, about photos that are currently in the news. Minimum once a month. Maybe once or twice a month.

I started with this week with a Addenda post about India, and a photo making rounds there currently.

For Access to monthly Addenda post on Patreon, you have to be a Patreon member. Patreon helps creators and writers run a subscription service and earn supplementary income. If you like what I do and what I write, or simply wants me to write more, you can support me via Patreon. I had tremendous fun researching and writing Iconic Photos, and the Patreon is a way for this blog to be self-sustaining.

Proceeds mainly go to buying photography reference books and support me on my research (re: paywalled articles, trips to various archives). In addition to addenda posts, readers who subscribe on Patreon might have access to a few blog posts early; chance to request topics or to participate in some polls

Our posts on Iconic Photos will remain free, for everyone. But if you can support us, please do.

Even if Patreon isn’t your thing, you can support by re-sharing, or tweeting about the blog or the specific posts on here. Thanks for your continued support!  Here is the link:

https://www.patreon.com/iconicphotos