Photography as we know it was introduced to the public in the 1840s. It has been proposed as the final image of reality and the eternal conclusion of history - unlike art or prose, photographs are not easily altered or faked. They were used to portray the horrors and truths of war, inform the public about conflicts around the world, and subconsciously instill the importance of national pride and patriotism by demonstrating the bravery and bravery of young soldiers on the front lines. Today, war photography has taken a frightening turn, manipulation and alteration are the order of the day and it is often difficult to confirm their authenticity. Many of the photographs in this collection have been questioned and examined in detail, but their impact on the world has been very powerful, despite doubts and criticism.
10. Bomb "Fat Man", 1945.
This is one of the most famous photographs in the world. It depicts the nuclear attack on Nagasaki, where the Fat Man bomb was dropped on August 9th, 1945. The American bombing of Japan in the final stages of World War II wiped out three city miles and killed 70,000 people at lightning speed, and many more through radiation exposure in the following years. . At the time, news of the atomic bombing was heartily welcomed in America, reinforced by this image (photo censorship was in place, prohibiting the showing of death and loss of life). Several years later, however, documentaries and photographs were revealed and the world learned of the terrible human tragedy. Since then, this photograph has been used to represent the true nature of war and the dangerous potential of human invention.
9. Dr. Fritz Klein stands in a mass grave in Belsen.
This famous photograph shows Dr. Fritz Klein, the camp doctor, standing in a mass grave at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. His main responsibility was the selection of prisoners to be sent to the gas chambers. From 1942-1944, Jews, Gypsies, people with disabilities, Soviet military prisoners, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and other political and religious opponents were brought here by train. Here, after a selection process, prisoners were forced to work for 12-15 hours. The weaker, older and helpless were sent directly to the gas chambers (where everyone eventually ended up). The bodies were disposed of by burying them in mass graves or burning them at the stake.
8. Civil resistance, 1943.
The Warsaw Ghetto in Poland was the largest in Nazi-occupied Europe and was founded in 1940 to contain 400,000 Jews under barbed wire. Disease, starvation, attacks and murders by guards decimated the inhabitants, who, despite it all, founded underground organizations to run schools, hospitals, orphanages and recreation centers. This photo shows the aftermath of the world famous Warsaw Resistance in 1943, in which Nazi forces were attacked with homemade and smuggled weapons. Later, 13,000 people were killed in the ghetto, and the rest were captured and sent to concentration camps. The photo above was taken by a Nazi soldier and was published by the German press with the headline, “Forcibly removed from the pastures.” The photo was later used as evidence against Nazi officials at the Nuremberg trials of 1945-46.
7. Omaha Beach, D-Day, 1944
Robert Capa, a Hungarian combat photographer, is famous for the photographs he took during World War II that gave the world a glimpse into the reality of war. This photograph shows the June 6th, 1944 invasion of Nazi-occupied Normandy by British, American, Canadian and Free French troops. Lack of focus is reported as a mistake by a young trainee. Life magazine, for which Capa worked, decided to publish the image anyway because it depicted the efforts of Union troops sailing toward Omaha Beach under artillery fire and machine guns. It was this type of photography that raised national pride and to this day salutes the fallen soldiers of the bloodiest war.
6. The Falling Soldier, Spanish Civil War, 1936.
“Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death” is the official title of this photograph, which depicts the moment a militiaman is shot and falls to the ground in almost slow motion. The fallen man is said to be Federico Borrell García, a Spanish Republican anarchist soldier. Until the 1970s, the image was said to be one of the most infamous and striking photographs of the Spanish Civil War. The authenticity of this photograph was later questioned.
5. General Nguyen Ngoc Loan executes a Viet Cong prisoner, Vietnam, 1968.
This Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph of Eddie Adams is among the most famous war photographs of all time. The man with the weapon is General Nguyen Ngoc Loan, Head of the State Police of the Republic of Vietnam. The person executed is Nguyen Van Lem, a Viet Cong soldier. The story claims that the prisoner was found near a ditch filled with the bodies of 34 police officers and their relatives. The buzz created by this photograph opened a new chapter in the world of photojournalism: “a picture is worth one thousand words.” The image became an anti-war symbol, but Adams responded: “I killed the general with my camera... but what the photograph doesn't say is, 'What would you do if you were a general and caught a bad guy on that hot day? who killed the soldiers and their families?”
4. Collapse of the statue of Saddam Hussein in Baghdad, 2003.
This photograph, the newest of the collection, had significant symbolic influence. As a symbol of his all-encompassing power, Saddam's cult of personality captivated Iraqi culture; statues, portraits and posters were built in his honor across the country, and his face was featured everywhere, from the façade of buildings, schools and airports, to the surface of the nation's currency. When Saddam's regime was overthrown in 2003, images of the destruction of a large statue in Baghdad were broadcast on television channels around the world. 
3. Burned alive in Vietnam, 1972.
This photo is one of the most creepy and heart-wrenching in modern history. The naked girl in the center, Phan Thai Kim Phuc, is a victim of a South Vietnamese napalm attack. She escapes from the bombed area, literally burning alive. In 1972, South Vietnamese planes, in concert with US military forces, dropped a napalm bomb on the village of Trang, then occupied by North Vietnamese forces. The photo earned photographer Nick Ut a Pulitzer Prize, despite public opinion and President Nixon's doubts about its authenticity. But he adamantly proved the authenticity by releasing details of the small Barxi Hospital in Saigon where 9-year-old Kim Phuc was treated for more than 14 months. The girl survived and became the founder of the Kim Phuc Foundation in 1997, providing medical and psychological assistance to children victims of war.
2. American flag over Iwo Jima, 1945.
The Iwo Jima flag raising is a fairly famous war photograph. The flag was raised by five US Marines and one Corpsman on Mount Suribachi in 1945. Few people know that this was the second flag. The first one was too small and could not be seen from afar. Photographer Joe Rosenthal, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his image, arrived just in time for the installation of the second flag.
1. Banner of victory over the Reichstag, 1945.
The world-famous photograph was taken by Evgeniy Khaldei and spread all over the world. In fact, this is a staged photograph taken on the instructions of TASS on May 2, 1945. The real flag was installed the day before, and in addition to it, many other red banners were installed. The photographer brought with him a banner and invited the soldiers he came across to take a dramatic photo. The history of this photograph, which might not have made it to the general public, is also interesting. It was initially rejected because one of the soldiers had a watch clearly visible on each of his wrists. To avoid blaming the soldiers for looting, the photographer removed the watch from the photo before publication.
The essence of war photography remains the same: you have to get as close as possible and still be alive, you have to make the tragedy speak, imbue it with emotion and artistic value, you have to empathize while remaining objective.
Javier Manzano“The worst emotional situation for any photographer is when he makes eye contact with someone he's photographing and realizes that there really is absolutely nothing he can do to help him.”
Javier Manzano moved with his family from Mexico to the United States at age 18, so it is not surprising that drug wars and events near the Mexican-American border occupy a special place in his reporting. In 2011, he received his first World Press Photo prize for a photograph from the Mexican city of Ciudad Juarez, one of the most crime-prone cities in the world, and a year later he went to photograph the war in Syria. The result of this trip is two major photographic stories, awarded the Pulitzer Prize.
Remy Oschlik
“War is worse than drugs. At some point it turns into a terrible journey, into a nightmare, but then, as soon as the danger subsides, there is an irresistible desire to go back and get even more.
Since childhood, Remi Oschlik dreamed of becoming a war photographer, and at the age of 20 he managed to fulfill his dream. In 2004, he went to film the political crisis in Haiti, and when he returned, he received the François Chalet Prize for it. Oshlik continued to film in extreme conditions: demonstrations in his native France, Haiti, engulfed in a cholera epidemic, and Arab conflicts. He knew very well the great Robert Capa’s maxim that closeness to the subject lies a good shot. However, the habit of being at the center of events played a cruel joke on him, and on February 22, 2012, Oshlik died during the bombing of Homs.
James Nachtwey
“I'm half deaf. My nerves are damaged and my ears are constantly ringing, and sometimes I can’t hear anything at all. I probably became deaf because I didn't put earplugs in my ears. All because I wanted to hear.”
James Nachtwey is one of the most famous photographers of our time. He began his career back in 1976 and since then has visited hot spots around the world, received the Robert Capa Gold Medal five times, was recognized twice by World Press Photo, was a member of the famous Bang Bang Club, and also became the protagonist of a documentary film War Photographer. In 2003, the already middle-aged James Nachtwey was wounded during an attack on a military convoy in Baghdad, but managed to recover quite quickly. Nachtwey is generally an amazing example of a successful career as a war photographer: he is famous, his photographs are in demand, he is 65 years old, and he is still alive.
Denis Sinyakov
“The work of a photojournalist has changed a lot today. Now he increasingly films not on the front line, but somewhere in the depths.”
The example of photographer Denis Sinyakov is indicative: danger awaited him while filming military conflicts, but overtook him in the peaceful Pechora Sea. On September 19, 2013, he was detained along with the crew of the Arctic Sunrise vessel for an action near the Prirazlomnaya platform. And although Sinyakov performed only his duties as a photographer, he was charged with piracy (now classified as hooliganism) and two months in a pre-trial detention center.
On the photographer’s personal website you can find reports from the Georgian-Russian and Lebanese-Israeli conflicts, footage of the activities of the medical evacuation team (Medevac) in Afghanistan and much more.
In addition, Denis Sinyakov is known for filming the concert of the punk group Pussy Riot, the preparation and the “I’ll steal for Putin” campaign by the Femen group, as well as the trial of Mikhail Khodorkovsky. However, Sinyakov’s portfolio includes not only political topics: he photographed the life of the Nenets, forest fires, residents of the ghost village of Muslimovo and much more. Recently, the photographer has been paying much attention to his project Changing Face of Russia, in which he touched upon such a complex topic as the migration of citizens from the countries of the former USSR to Russia.
Zoria Miller
“To become a photojournalist, any equipment capable of taking a photograph is sufficient, including cell phones with cameras, disposable cameras, or simply low-budget cameras. I started my career with a regular 6 megapixel camera and you can still see those images in my portfolio.”
American photographer Zoria Miller has a special interest in photographs of military conflicts. At one time he worked for the Red Cross and participated in volunteer programs to assist third world countries. Today he tries to pay special attention to various foundations and humanitarian organizations. The specific beauty and expressiveness of some shots can compete even with the legendary landing in Normandy performed by Robert Capa.
Ron Haviv
“I went to Slovenia, the first republic to take the path of secession, after I read a short article in the newspaper about national movements and a possible war. I ended up spending about five years between 1991 and 2001 documenting how the country dissolved through various wars.”
A war correspondent originally from the United States began filming armed conflicts back in the late 1980s, and his finest hour came during the Yugoslav wars. His reports captured dramatic episodes of the Battle of Vukovar and the siege of Sarajevo, as well as the activities of the famous Serbian formation "Arkan Tigers". It was while photographing the “tigers” that Haviv took the famous photograph in the Bosnian city of Bijeljina. This photograph became one of the symbols of the Yugoslav War in general and war crimes in particular. It showed a soldier from the Arkan Tigers kicking the body of one of the civilians his comrades had just killed.
Haviv continued his photographic activity after Yugoslavia. He has photographed the drug wars in Mexico, the civil war in Sri Lanka, a photo report on the consequences of the Russian-Georgian conflict, as well as the war of criminal gangs in Los Angeles.
Manu Brado
“Often we hide behind cameras so as not to feel anything. Then we think: this works, but this doesn’t, this touches, but this doesn’t, this may attract attention. It's like we turn to stone. And when you get home or get to the hotel and start editing the pictures, you start to feel everything that happened during the day.”
The Spaniard Manu Brado successfully completed his studies in the art of photography in Oviedo and Madrid, after which he found himself in the glorious business of a war correspondent and became part of the Associated Press agency.
This year he won the Pulitzer Prize for his photograph from besieged Aleppo, where he captured an incredibly powerful and tragic image of a father holding his dying son in his arms. Particular attention should be paid to his reports from Libya, which were given to Brado with great difficulty, since in April 2011 the Libyan army took the photographer into custody, keeping him in custody for more than a month. 
Fabio Buchiarelli
“Every conflict leaves indelible traces, scars that you carry within yourself. What remains is the grief and pain of mothers who lost their children during the bombings, the tears of happiness of the people who were freed from dictatorship, the thousands of civilians who leave their homes in search of safety, the people you meet along the way, with whom talking and sharing a piece of your life..."
Buchiarelli began his career as a photojournalist only four years ago, but today he has already been awarded two major photo competitions (second prize World Press Photo 2013, third place Sony World Photo Award 2013), as well as publications in world-famous publications (The Times, The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal and La Repubblica).
The Italian received an engineering degree from the Polytechnic University of Turin, worked in his specialty for about a year, and then radically changed his occupation. In 2009, he went to Turkey and Iran to film, but became famous only after returning home. On April 6, 2009, a powerful earthquake began, which practically wiped out the city of L'Aquila, the capital of the Abruzzo region. After taking pictures of the consequences of this terrible tragedy, Buchiarelli became known in the world of photography.
Later, with the beginning of the Jasmine Revolution and the war in Libya, he was able to express himself in war photography. Today Buchiarelli is a recognized master of his craft, the author of the book “The Smell of War” and a journalist whose articles are successfully published in major Italian publications. On his website you can find photographs from military Libya, modern Syria, reports on clashes in Mali and a series of photographs dedicated to the little-known conflict between the Karen national district and Burma.
Paul Hansen
“We arrived in Libya, in Tripoli, there was chaos and danger all around, we didn’t know anyone and we needed a translator. In the hotel lobby we met quite a few locals, one of them turned out to be an engineer. He was a pleasant man, calm, with kind eyes, he was about 60, he was not a young guy in search of profit. We finally asked him if he could help us and he agreed, but said that he could only work half a day since his son was killed yesterday.”
Few can remain indifferent to the photograph of Gaza Burial, depicting the grieving relatives and children killed during the bombing of the Gaza Strip. This photograph is so powerful and emotionally charged that after its victory in World Press Photo 2013, there was an expert who said that this was not just a photograph, but some kind of clever collage. However, the jury and experts of the world's largest photo competitions, after analyzing the photo, came to the conclusion that this is still not a collage or the notorious Photoshop.
Hansen is a photographer with quite a lot of experience, one of the few war correspondents who prefers working in the staff (Swedish publication Dagens Nyheter) rather than freelancing. At the same time, the photographer’s interests extend far beyond the borders of calm Sweden, thanks to which on his personal website you can see reports from modern Afghanistan, the problematic Congo, Kenya, occupied Iraq and protest Bahrain.
Walter Astrade
"Instead of thinking, 'He's showing us cruelty again,' I hope people will start thinking, 'What can I do to change this?'"
Walter Astrade was born in Buenos Aires and began his career at the local newspaper La Nacion, and finally developed as a photographer after a long trip to South America. He now lives in Barcelona, working on a major photography project on the abuse of women, and teaching photography.
You should visit the site at least for two of his photo reports: Bloodbathon Madagascar and Kenya Post Election Violence. This is a terrible sight for an audience with strong nerves, the quintessence of war, a realistic picture of conflicts on the dark continent.
What is war photography? Is it art or a way to capture the truth, a form of propaganda or a weapon against war? If there is a clear answer to this question, then it lies in the fate of war photographers, in their willingness to neglect any danger for the sake of one single photograph.
The very first
Roger Fenton became the first official war photographer, and the Crimean War became the first war, the truth about which reached the general public. However, Fenton rather sided with those who tried to embellish this truth. He was sent to Crimea at the insistence of Prince Consort Albert in order to calm English public opinion and show the British army and the war itself in a favorable light. The photographer avoided photographing dead and wounded soldiers and the destruction left behind during the fighting, and did this not only because of his own loyalty, but also because of the imperfection of photographic equipment. Bulky and heavy equipment limited the choice of subjects; the low sensitivity of the materials made it possible to photograph only stationary objects. Fenton could not have captured one of the battles even if he wanted to. Instead, he photographed military men and officials posing for him, camp sites, a railway yard, trenches and batteries, various landscapes, panoramas of the outskirts of Sevastopol, Balaklava, and ships in the roadstead. And yet, despite the primitiveness of the technology of that time, the restrictions imposed by the political situation, the desire of the publisher to commercially use the resulting photographic material, and the ordinary disorder of everyday life (Fenton traveled in a wine van converted into a darkroom, in which “by noon it was so hot , that you could burn your hand if touched"), the photographs taken by the photographer - the first evidence of the war - convey its horror and at the same time are filled with sincere human warmth. From the Crimean War, Fenton brought three hundred and fifty large format negatives. One of these works is included in the collection “100 Photographs That Changed the World.”
Death Valley (No Man's Land, between the positions of the British and Russian armies, covered with unexploded cannonballs). Crimean War. 1855
Robert Capa Gold Medal
During World War II, Robert Capa carried out assignments for Life magazine, photographing on all fronts. In 1944, he was the only photographer to photograph the Allied landings on Omaha Beach in Normandy. True to his credo, he walked in the front ranks of the infantry, and then, under fire, filmed in the water until the film ran out. Due to an oversight by a laboratory technician, almost all the images were exposed, and only eleven frames were saved. But these 11 pictures went down in history.
Omaha Beach, Normandy, France. 1944
When Egypt, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Saudi Arabia and Yemen declared war on Israel, which declared its independence, Capa went there. His destiny was to film military actions. He didn't know how to work where it was too calm. Robert Capa died on May 25, 1954 in Vietnam at the very end of the Indochina War, when he was blown up by a mine. A year later, the US Press Club introduced a new award - the Robert Capa Gold Medal. This medal is awarded for the most impressive photo reports. One of the mandatory criteria by which photographic works are evaluated is the risk to the life of the photographer during shooting.
At the right time in the right place
Margaret Bourke-White- the first female photographer in the famous Life magazine, the first female war correspondent, the first female photographer to take part in a combat operation. In 1941, during the German attack, she found herself in Moscow, being the first Western photographer to receive permission to photograph in the USSR. She had an incredible ability to be where history is being made. She accompanied American troops in northern Africa, Italy and Germany. And in the spring of 1945, at the end of the war, Bourke-White created a stunning series dedicated to the Buchenwald concentration camp. “Using the camera provided some relief. She created a small barrier between me and the horror surrounding me,” the photographer would say later.
Buchenwald. 1945
But Margaret Bourke-White was not only in the right place at the right time, she knew how to see and highlight the main thing, turn photographs into dynamic journalistic photo essays, complete stories in which she laid deep meaning. And for the sake of the effect she needed, which would allow her to fully convey the meaning of the message, she was literally not afraid to get her hands dirty. During the Korean War, where Bourke-White was sent to photograph the atrocities of the northern communists, she took a very controversial photograph. After the execution of a North Korean prisoner, she picked up the severed head and, holding it in one hand and the camera in the other, took a photo: a hand holding the severed head with a smiling executioner with an ax in the background.
Classics of world war photography
Dmitry Baltermants said that his generation of photographers did not know how to photograph war, and he himself would prefer not to learn this. But the Great Patriotic War was the beginning of his career. Baltermantz's first professional reportage - the entry of Soviet troops into Western Ukraine in 1939 - was so impressive that he was immediately offered a position as a staff photographer at the Izvestia newspaper. He could have made a name for himself in science, but chose to become a war photographer. And he became one of the best. He knew how to capture everyday heroism without pathos. Soldiers running with rifles at the ready, cropped figures, greased overcoats. It seems that just a little more, and you will hear screams and cannonade. This is “Attack” - one of the photographer’s most famous photographs, which has become a classic of world war photography.
Attack. November 1941
However, the fate of Baltermants' photographs was sometimes quite strange. Ordinary shots immediately went to print, but true masterpieces, which museums and private collections are proud of today, were evaluated and published decades later. Perhaps the reason is also that the photographer was demoted from a correspondent for Izvestia to an employee of a front-line newspaper. In 1943, Baltermantz came to the editorial office to develop and print photographs and left them unattended. By mistake, his photograph, taken in Moscow, was sent to the printing house with the caption “German prisoners from Stalingrad.” They blamed the photographer for this and immediately fired him from the newspaper.
A striking example of Baltermantz’s unappreciated photograph in its time is “Tchaikovsky,” a photograph taken in a German town at the end of the war. The soldiers asked to take them off so they could send the card to their relatives. This almost “random” photograph is also one of the most famous war photographs.
Tchaikovsky (Breslau). 1945
His name is known to few, his photographs to everyone.
Evgeny Khaldey captured the Second World War from the first to the last day, and it is the photographs of these two days that are some of his most famous works: the photograph “The First Day of the War”, the only one taken in Moscow on June 22, 1941; and the photograph “Banner over the Reichstag” taken in May 1945, which became a real symbol of Victory.
Between these frames are hundreds and hundreds of others, covering the entire war, from the announcement of Germany's attack on the USSR to the Nuremberg trials. Photographs that have traveled the world and found their place as illustrations in textbooks, documentary books, and encyclopedias. Chaldea's camera, with equal impartiality and skill, photographed the Paris Conference of Foreign Ministers, the defeat of the Japanese in the Far East, the conference of the heads of the Allied powers in Potsdam, and the signing of the act of surrender of Germany. The photographer himself participated in the liberation of Sevastopol, the storming of Novorossiysk, Kerch, the liberation of Romania, Bulgaria, Yugoslavia, Austria, and Hungary. At the Nuremberg trials, photographs of Khaldei were presented as evidence. These are photographs that have become history.
But the famous photograph “The Banner over the Reichstag” is already a story created by the hands of the photographer himself. Khaldei, who was in Moscow at that time, was given the task of urgently flying to Berlin and filming the soldiers hoisting the red flag over the Reichstag. The photographer took care of the flag in advance: he borrowed a red cloth from the TASS Photo Chronicle caretaker and gave it to a tailor, who sewed a flag with a star, hammer and sickle. “And so, with a flag in my bosom, I stealthily walked around the Reichstag and made my way into it from the main entrance,” Khaldei later recalled. The pole for the banner was found in the attic of the already captured Reichstag. Two machine gunners, at the request of the photographer, climbed onto the roof, and the historical moment was captured. This photo is one of the rare cases when a staged photograph looks like a reportage one.
Banner over the Reichstag. Berlin. May 1945
The photograph that “killed” the general
Photo taken Eddie Adams in 1968, in which an officer shoots a handcuffed prisoner in the head, won its author a Pulitzer Prize and caused a huge resonance in US society. “Moments captured in photographs are perhaps the most powerful weapons in the world,” Eddie Adams himself once wrote. And this photograph became just such a weapon, ricocheting at the officer depicted on it. Seeing such “atrocities of war,” American citizens were imbued with sympathy for the prisoner, although the photograph was not at all as clear as it seems at first glance. The prisoner was the captain of a squad of "revenge warriors", and that day they killed several dozen civilians. The fate of the officer who fired - General Nguyen Ngoc Loan - was ruined. The Australian military hospital refused to treat him, and after moving to the United States, Loan faced a massive campaign calling for his immediate deportation. Even after the war he continued to be insulted. When he settled in Virginia and opened a restaurant, vandals wrote on his walls: “We know who you are!” The restaurant soon had to close.
Eddie Adams felt guilty towards Loan and apologized for taking this photo in the first place. “The general killed a Vietnamese, and I killed the general with my camera,” the photographer said.
Murder of a Vietnamese by the Saigon police chief. 1968
Bombshell effect
Nick Yut Already at the age of 18, being a professional photographer, he passionately wanted to photograph in a war zone, he wanted to witness important events. On the morning of June 8, 1972, his wish came true; he became not only a witness, but to a much greater extent a “provocateur” of even larger events, taking one of the most famous shots in the history of photojournalism. That day, the photographer was driving towards the village of Trang Bang when South Vietnamese Air Force planes dropped four napalm bombs on the town. Among the victims of the explosion was a nine-year-old girl, Kim Phuc, who suffered severe burns, tore off her clothes and ran naked. The photograph of a little Vietnamese girl running away from exploding napalm had the effect of a bomb exploding. The photo made the whole world think about the war in Vietnam and raised a new wave of anti-war protests in the United States, which were joined by international human rights organizations. President Nixon declared the photo a fake, to which the photographer replied: “This photo is as real as the Vietnam War itself.”
The photo of 9-year-old Kim Phuc on June 8, 1972 went down in history forever, and Nick Yut received the Pulitzer Prize and overnight gained worldwide fame.
National Geographic Icon
He began his career as a photojournalist during the war in Afghanistan. In 1979, as a private citizen, dressed in local clothes, he crossed the Afghan-Pakistani border to report on a clash between rebel forces and government troops. To take away the photographs he had taken, he had to sew the film into a turban, socks and even underwear. Several photographs were published by The New York Times, but at that moment few people were interested in the events in Afghanistan. However, the situation changed radically when the Soviet-Afghan war began just a few months later. None of the Western agencies had actual photographs, and McCurry’s photographs immediately appeared on the pages of the world’s leading magazines: Paris Match, Stern, Times, Newsweek, Life. Subsequently, McCurry filmed the Iran-Iraq War, civil wars in Lebanon, Cambodia, the Philippines, and the Gulf War. He received the highest award for a war photographer, the Robert Capa Gold Medal for "the best photographic report from abroad requiring exceptional courage and initiative."
But it was the photograph of an Afghan refugee that truly brought him world fame. In late 1984, McCurry found himself in the Nazir Bagh Pashtun refugee camp near Peshawar, where he was allowed to take photographs in a girls' classroom. “I didn’t think that this photograph would be any different from many other photographs that I took that day,” McCurry would later say, but it was this photograph of a 12-year-old green-eyed Afghan girl that was destined to fly around the world, becoming one of the most circulated photographs in the world. In the 20 years since its first publication in June 1985 on the cover of National Geographic magazine, the “Afghan Girl” has become one of the most recognizable photographic images of the era; the photograph has appeared on the pages of other magazines, postcards, posters, and has become a tattoo on the backs of peace fighters. The National Geographic Society of the United States included her in the top 100 photographs, and in 2005 her cover was included in the top ten “Best Magazine Covers of the Last 40 Years.” Despite such popularity, the “Afghan girl” remained anonymous for 17 years, only in 2002, McCurry and the National Geographic team found a woman named Sharbat Gula.
Afghan girl. 1984
Peace Prize for War Photographer
“The truth does not need to be embellished. You just have to say it, and often it’s enough to do it once,” that’s the credo James Nachtwey, a war photographer who received the Peace Prize for his photographs.
He filmed in Afghanistan, Rwanda, Chechnya, Darfur and Iraq, the Balkans and near the World Trade Center in New York after the terrorist attack. Swiss director and producer Christian Frei followed the photographer for two years during the wars in Indonesia, Kosovo and Palestine, filming The War Photographer. Special micro-cameras were attached to Nachtwey's camera, allowing him to track his every move, every stage of the shooting, giving a unique insight into the work of a passionate photojournalist. “I became a photographer to be a war photographer,” admits James Nachtwey. “And everything I did before was just preparation. I was inspired by photographs from the Vietnam War and photographs of the civil rights movement in the United States. They had an incredible impact on the consciousness of the nation. The photographs that came to us from Vietnam were brutal documentary images, but that is precisely why they became an indictment of the war. They proved to be fuel for protest. They illustrated how crazy the war was, how cruel and unnecessary it was... Those photographs created the pressure that was needed for change, and as a result, America came out of the war earlier than it otherwise would have. Those photographs didn't just document history, they helped change the course of history."
Nachtwey's own photographs also change history. If he is a witness, then his photographs are evidence. Testimony against events that “must not be forgotten and must not be repeated.”
Photos to die for
There are still wars going on in the world, and hundreds of photographers go to hot spots to capture history, or to make history, or simply because, like the modern photographer David Leeson, who was awarded the highest award in journalism for his photographs - the Pulitzer Prize, they believe that there are photographs that are worth dying for, and that there are photographs that can stop bloodshed.
On November 30, 1939, the Soviet-Finnish war began, which many historians attribute to the events of the Second World War. The goal of the Soviet Union at that time was to ensure the security of Leningrad, which was located dangerously close to the border with Finland. In the event of a full-scale military conflict, Finland could provide its territory as a springboard for the deployment of troops of opponents of the USSR. The bloody Soviet-Finnish war continued until March 1940. On the eve of the 75th anniversary of this event, we decided to recall the best photographs demonstrating the horrors of war and the joy of victory. We present to your attention a selection of the 10 most famous war photographs.
“Combat”, Maxim Alpert (1942)
The famous photograph “Combat” was taken by Soviet front-line correspondent Maxim Alpert on July 12, 1942 in the Lugansk region, where the 220th Infantry Regiment held a heroic defense. The photograph shows a Soviet commander with a TT pistol in his hand, rousing his soldiers to attack. Alpert only managed to take a couple of photographs of the commander before a shell fragment broke his camera. The same shell killed the battalion commander. The unique photograph was published in Soviet newspapers in the same year, but the name of the hero captured in the picture remained unknown. Only years later it was found out that the legendary battalion commander was from Ukraine, Zaporozhye region. The photograph of M. Alpert became a real symbol of courage and military courage; it was immortalized in several monuments and anniversary medals.
Bomb "Fat Man", 1945 A unique photo showing the explosion of the American atomic bomb, nicknamed "Fat Man", during the bombing of Nagasaki on August 9, 1945. This four and a half ton bomb had a plutonium core surrounded by more than sixty explosive charges, which were assembled into a regular geometric shape, reminiscent of a football. The detonation of the charges led to a nuclear chain reaction and a destructive explosion.
The photograph depicts the first and, fortunately, only time in human history when atomic bombs were used for military purposes. More than seventy thousand people were killed during the American bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and many thousands more died from the effects of radiation in the following years. Today, this famous photograph clearly shows the dangerous potential of atomic weapons and the true, ruthless nature of war.
Omaha Beach, Robert Capa (1944)
On June 6, 1944, the Allied operation, called D-Day, began to land troops on the shores of Normandy (France). A total of five landing points were identified, one of which was Omaha Beach, for which the American army was responsible. It was in this sector that the most fierce and bloody battles with fascist troops took place. In just one day of fighting, the Americans lost about three thousand soldiers here. This happened because the bomber planes, due to fog, were unable to destroy the enemy fortifications in this area. The legendary photograph taken by war photographer Robert Capa captured the very moment of the landing of troops on Omaha Beach, when tens of thousands of soldiers had to overcome the distance to the shore under artillery fire.
Capa was next to the soldiers during these terrible events; he also had to dive under water to escape bullets. The photographer had no time to think about technical issues, so the photo turned out blurry, with obvious errors in exposure. However, this did not prevent the photograph from becoming truly iconic - it was published by Life magazine, thus paying tribute to the valor and courage of the soldiers who died heroically during the bloody battle.
Execution in Saigon, Eddie Adams, 1968 Perhaps the most famous photo of the Vietnam War. It was taken in 1968 by Associated Press photojournalist Eddie Adams in Saigon as the Viet Cong began an active attack on the city. In the capital, the photographer's attention was attracted by two infantrymen of the South Vietnamese army who were escorting a man. Adams, camera in hand, watched as the two soldiers told General Nguyen Ngoc Loan that the prisoner had killed the police. Immediately the military commander took out a revolver, pointed the barrel at the prisoner’s head and pulled the trigger. Literally a second before the shot, another click was heard - Adams took his legendary shot.
This photographic image became a symbol of the anti-war movement in America, playing a significant role in changing the attitude of ordinary Americans to the events of the Vietnam War. Adams received many prestigious awards for his photography, including the Pulitzer Prize. However, the events of that day are not so clear. After all, the captured Viet Cong, who was killed in cold blood by a brigadier general, was arrested near a ditch filled with more than thirty corpses of policemen and their relatives. Adams himself later called General Nguyen Ngoc a hero.
"Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima" by Joe Rosenthal (1945)
Joe Rosenthal captured on camera a group of US Marines who fought for the tiny island of Iwo Jima raising the flag on Mount Suribashi. This photograph became extremely popular in the West and was reprinted in many publications. It is noteworthy that Mount Suribashi had been taken by American troops two hours earlier before the very moment of filming, and the Stars and Stripes flag had already been raised on it. However, that flag was too small, so it was decided to replace it with a more significant canvas. By the way, this large banner has survived to this day and is kept in the Museum of the US Marine Corps. The capture of the island came at a serious cost to the Americans - they lost more than twenty-five thousand people killed and wounded, so Rosenthal's photo is one of the most recognizable and significant images of World War II.
"Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death", Robert Capa (1936)
Another famous photo from the outstanding photojournalist Robert Capa. In September 1936, the then young reporter Capa went to Spain, where the events of the Civil War were unfolding at that moment. On the morning of September 5, Capa was in a trench in southern Extremadura. When the attack of the Republican army began and machine gun fire rang out, Capa simply stuck his camera out of the trench and pulled the trigger at random. Imagine his surprise when in the developed photo he saw an amazing moment - a shot militiaman falls to the ground in slow motion.
The photo turned out to be very dramatic and emotional. However, many experts doubt that this incredible footage is genuine. They consider Capa's photograph to be staged, indicating that the author of the photograph himself was actually several kilometers from the epicenter of the fighting. In addition, it is known that the militiaman, later identified from a photograph, was actually killed at the moment when he tried to hide behind a tree.
Burnt Alive in Vietnam, Nick Ut (1972)
A heartbreaking and poignant photograph of the Vietnam War. It shows crying, frightened children running to escape a napalm air attack on a village. The naked nine-year-old girl Feng Tai Kim Phuc, who we see in the center of the photo, suffered fatal burns during these terrible events. But doctors in Saigon, after performing seventeen plastic surgeries, were still able to save her. In the 90s, she moved to live in North America, where she founded her own foundation designed to help children who were victims of military conflicts. Nick Ut was awarded the Pulitzer Prize for this photo.
Fritz Klein, a doctor at the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, was arrested in April 1945 by representatives of the British army. The main responsibility of this doctor was the selection of Jews and Soviet prisoners of war to be sent to the gas chambers. In the first days after the liberation of the concentration camp, he, along with other SS men, was forced to bury the corpses scattered throughout the Bergen-Belsen camp in a mass grave. In this camp, British troops found more than ten thousand corpses, and they also freed sixty thousand prisoners. The picture shows Dr. Klein standing in a huge grave on the mountain of the dead. At the end of 1945, by decision of the British tribunal, Fritz Klein was hanged.
“Banner of Victory over the Reichstag”, Evgeniy Khaldei (1945)
On April 30, 1945, Evgeniy Khaldei managed to capture the legendary moment - soldiers of the Soviet army hoisted the Victory Banner over the Reichstag. In the USSR, the photograph became a real symbol of victory over Nazi Germany; it was also published in all leading publications in the world. The world-famous photograph taken by Soviet photojournalist Evgeniy Khaldei was actually staged. On instructions from the editors, Khaldei went to Berlin, taking with him three red banners, one of which adorned the Reichstag. But by that time, Soviet soldiers had already hoisted the flag on the Reichstag building, so Khaldei decided to take a series of staged photos. He asked the soldiers of the 8th Guards Army who met him on the way to help climb the historical building and plant a red banner there. Khaldei found the best angle and shot two cassettes of film.
"Victory in Time Square", Alfred Eisenstadt, 1945 Finally, a well-recognized photograph taken in Times Square by Life magazine reporter Eisenstadt in a moment of triumph - during the celebration of Japan's surrender. In the photo, a naval sailor kisses an unknown nurse. The photographer managed to catch a good moment during the general public rejoicing. The photo of the kiss in Times Square became a symbol of victory for Americans in World War II. The heroes of this legendary shot met in the central square of New York completely by accident; they knew nothing about each other until that moment. Everything happened very quickly, the couple kissed, and then they were immediately surrounded by a crowd of people and they disappeared into it. Therefore, the names of the subjects of Eisenstadt’s photos remained anonymous for a long time.
Only decades later was it finally possible to identify the girl - she turned out to be Edith Shane. In August 1945, she heard the long-awaited news about the end of the war and ran to Time Square to celebrate, where Edith fell into the arms of a completely unfamiliar sailor. But the role of that same sailor from the legendary photograph was subsequently disputed by many men. It is believed that this was Carl Muscarello, who was about twenty years old at the time of the celebration of the victory over Japan.
In the last, most brutal and bloody battle in the history of mankind with the Nazi invaders, Soviet soldiers amazed the world with outstanding heroism and exploits, which have no equal in the world. This terrible war plunged humanity into chaos, but our people went through all the trials and emerged victorious. Victory in the Great Patriotic War is the greatest feat of the Soviet people. We are the descendants of that war generation and see the past war through the eyes of filmmakers and photojournalists. In this post I would like to talk about people who, as a rule, remained behind the scenes. These are the heroes, thanks to whom we have documentary film footage and photographic equipment that dispassionately tell us about all the horrors of war, cities taken and abandoned, troop movements, partisan attacks and the heroism of military and rear everyday life, the liberation of the country, and then of all of Europe. I also want to show you a photo report from an exhibition of photographs of military photojournalists from the ROSPHOTO collection.
War always begins suddenly, although a generation later it will seem inevitable to historians. In 1941, the most terrible, closest, most expensive - the Great Patriotic War - began. They say that the Nazis could not be stopped without huge losses...
During the four years of war, cameramen and photojournalists took hundreds of thousands of photographs and shot millions of meters of film. About one and a half hours out of every day of the terrible war remained captured. These people went to the front line and filmed from the trenches, from the viewing slot of a tank that was the first to enter the battlefield, from the cockpit of an airplane, through the embrasure of a bunker, from the windows of a burning building... they filmed from everywhere where the war was raging. During the most important Battle of Stalingrad, front-line cameramen filmed street battles for the first time. They were dedicated to their work, their goal and tried to do their work more than professionally, realizing that one day it could cost them their lives. Instead of once again protecting themselves, correspondents cared about the correct exposure and technical quality of the footage. Cameramen risked themselves for close-ups of battles, and photojournalists risked themselves for one expressive shot. Thanks to them, hundreds of thousands of faces were captured in the photo chronicle of the war, and people who did not survive that war remained forever alive on film.
The main task of war correspondents was to capture the people fighting at the front - soldiers and commanders of the Red Army, who were fluent in military equipment and combat tactics. Show their initiative, military ingenuity and cunning in the fight against the Nazis. To put on display their hatred of the Nazi invaders, to emphasize their steadfastness, dedication and discipline in carrying out the orders of the command.
For the first time during the war, correspondents were at the front. Three weeks after the start of the war, about 20 film groups, numbering more than 80 cameramen, were working in the most important sectors of the front. Front-line photographs printed on the pages of newspapers were distributed throughout the country in millions of copies. Unfortunately, catastrophically few frames have survived to this day, since at that time people considered it blasphemous to film pictures of nationwide grief. It was difficult to explain to the relatives of the victims that their suffering was being filmed for the sake of history. Many military journalists wore officer's shoulder straps and, in difficult times, took the place of killed officers and even privates. Thus, Pravda employee Borzenko was sent by the editors to cover the actions of the Kerch landing. During the landing, all the officers died, and the journalist, as the senior in rank, had to take charge of the defense of the captured “patch.” For three days before the arrival of reinforcements, he led the battle. He is the only one of all military journalists who was awarded the title “Hero of the Soviet Union.”
Photojournalists and cameramen witnessed the first major victory of the Soviet people - the defeat of the German armies near Moscow at the end of 1941 - beginning of 1942. More than 3 million people took part in this battle on both sides. We had to film in 35-degree frost. Before filming began, the cameras had to be warmed up under sheepskin coats. Thousands of meters of film shot by cameramen were included in the documentary “The Defeat of Nazi Troops near Moscow.” The film, released on February 18, 1942, received the USSR State Prize and the Academy Award for Best Film of the Year. For the correspondents filming the Battle of Kursk, the filming location was a minefield. And the operators did not have long-focus optics then. Therefore, to film, they had to wait for enemy tanks to approach the trenches. It is known that two documentaries by Soviet filmmakers about historical monuments destroyed during the war and the massacres of prisoners of war and civilians became an indictment document at the Nuremberg trials. Hundreds of military journalists died on the fronts of the Great Patriotic War, such as Musa Jalil, a famous poet, journalist, worked in Moscow before the war, an employee of the army newspaper “Courage”, executed in the Moabit fascist prison in March 1944, and Caesar Kunikov, a Moscow journalist, commander of a detachment of paratroopers who died in the battle for Novorossiysk in February 1943.
Georgy Lipskerov. Participated in battles. He was a photojournalist for newspapers of the 52nd Army and the 2nd Ukrainian Front. Since 1943, he was a member of a group of military documentary filmmakers. Filmed battles near Moscow, near Stalingrad, on the Kursk Bulge.
Photojournalist Dmitry Baltermants. Worked at Izvestia. His collaboration with the newspaper ended with a punishment battalion.
Natalya Bode is one of the few women war photojournalists. Filmed on the Southwestern, Central, and 1st Belorussian fronts. Went through the whole war
Correspondents pose for each other for a story
Special photojournalist for the Krasnaya Zvezda newspaper Oleg Knorring and cameraman Ivan Malov film the interrogation of a German defector
Soviet photojournalists at the Reichstag building, 1945
Arkady Shaikhet with American reporters on the Oder. 1945 Correspondent of "Frontline Illustration", author of the famous "Politruk". In the battle of Konigsberg, together with the driver in an editorial truck, he took fifteen wounded from the battlefield and was awarded the Order of the Red Banner.
The other day I was lucky enough to visit the state museum and exhibition center ROSPHOTO, where an exhibition of photographs by military photojournalists was presented. The exhibition featured works by classics of Russian photography - Emmanuel Evzirikhin, Boris Kudoyarov, Ivan Shagin, Sergei Loskutov. We also managed to see photographs of war correspondents - Jean Berland, Alexander Ditlov, Boris Pushkin, Semyon Kolonin, Efim Kopyta, as well as Yu. Pyasetsky and Y. Tabarovsky. The names of these people have yet to be returned to the history of Russian photography. Most of the photographs are original wartime prints intended for press publication. Different photo formats indicate author's framing. The exhibition also featured original works by Ivan Shagin and Emmanuel Evzerikhin, printed by them in the post-war period and modern prints that were made from original negatives from the archive of photojournalist Sergei Loskutov.
Photos taken by us at the exhibition center:
Fights for the liberation of Leningrad. Movement of the Red Army troops in the Luga area. January 1944. silver bromine print. photographer Boris Kudoyarov.
August 23, 1942. after a massive Nazi air raid. Stalingrad 1942. silver bromine print from the author's negative. Photographer Immanuel Nevzerikhin
Hitler's last defenders. Germany, 1945. silver bromine print. Photographer Ivan Shagin.
Leningrad under siege, 1941. silver bromine print. Komsomol members of the Kirov plant are marching. Photographer Boris Kudiyarov.
Pilot A. Molodchy with his navigator. 1943 silver bromine print. Photographer Ivan Shagin.
September 1941. Soviet partisan. Digital printing from the author's negative. Photographer Sergey Loskutov.
Stalingrad, August 24, 1942. silver bromine print In the photo, military cameraman A.P. Sofin. Photographer Emmanuel Nevzerikhin.
Meeting on the Elbe. Photographer Ivan Shagin. Germany, 1945.silver bromine print
Partisan of Ukraine. Photographer Ivan Shagin. Ukraine, 1943. Silver bromine print. (Dear Ukrainians, Savchenko is not your national hero. Your true heroes are girls like the one in the photo above)
Ural - to the front. Photographer Ivan Shagin. Ural, 1942. silver bromine print
The people of Kiev began to rebuild the city destroyed by the Nazis. Photographer Ivan Shagin. Kyiv, 1944, Silver bromine print
The exhibition takes place at the State Museum and Exhibition Center "ROSPHOTO". The unique project “The Great Patriotic War through the eyes of military photojournalists” included more than 500 photographs taken by classics of Russian photography, outstanding Soviet photographers. Also at the exhibition, a virtual museum project was presented for the first time, covering the events of the Second World War from the first days until the capture of Berlin.
More photos from the exhibition:
