These are powerful, fascinating, and disturbing photos from history.
My favorites.
The Armero Tragedy (1985)
This is Omayra Sanchez, a thirteen year old girl who lived in Armero, Colombia. On November 13th, 1985, the Nevado del Ruiz volcano erupted, sending a destructive pyroclastic flow of hot ash and debris rushing towards nearby towns. Omyra's town was destroyed. She was in her house when affected, resulting in her legs becoming trapped underneath a brick door. Rescue attempts concluded they could not remove her from the position without severing her legs. For three days she remained head above water until she died. The cause of death concluded gangrene and hypothermia. Towards the end of her life, her face swelled and her eyes turned red.
Turkish Man Teases Starving Armenians (1915)
A photo from the Armenian genocide: A Turkish official teases a group of starving Armenians with food. The Ottoman (Turkish) government began a systematic extermination of the Ottoman-Armenian "minority" group in April, 1915 during WWI. One of the many atrocities to occur during the four year holocaust was the forced deportation of women, children, and the elderly. Thousands of people were forced to walk miles into the Syrian desert as they were tortured, raped, and deprived of food and water. Many died during travel, while those that survived were put into internment camps. An estimated 800,000-1 million people are believed to have been killed during the time.
"Even today, almost a century later, the Euphrates River is filled with the bones of dead Armenians."
Woman & Child Fall From Fire Escape (Boston, 1975)
On July 22, 1975, nineteen year old Diana Bryant and her 2-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones fell 50 feet from a collapsed fire escape while firefighters attempted to rescue them from a burning building. Diana Bryant lost her life, however the child survived by landing on the woman's body, softening the fall. The series of photos captures the tragedy moment by moment. Stanley Forman was the photographer and titled them, "Fire Escape Collapse." The photographs were awarded the Pulitzer Prize which was led by controversy as the media claimed the photos invaded the privacy of the victim.
Vulture Stalks Starving Sudanese Child (1993)
This photo was taken by photojournalist Kevin Carter in March 1993 in Sudan. The vulture is stalking the starving child, waiting for her to die. The image was sold to the New York Times and garnered a lot of controversial attention. People worried for the child's well being (which remained unknown) and questioned why the photographer didn't do more to help. Carter won the Pulitzer Prize for the photograph in 1994 and committed suicide that same year.
Kevin Carter
Dead Iraqi Soldier (1991)
This photo was taken on the "Highway of Death" during the first Gulf War in 1991: An Iraqi soldier burned alive by a fuel-bomb dropped by the United States. The "Highway of Death" is a six-lane highway connecting Kuwait and Iraq. The US media deemed the photo too sensitive for publishing. Regarding this, Ken Jarecke, the photographer responsible for the image, said the following:
"So, basically, it was unseen in the US. In the UK it was published by the London Observer and I was actually going through Heathrow and I picked up the newspapers and I saw it was quite big, and that was basically the scene I thought I was going to see in all the newspapers around the world, since everybody had access to the image. It caused quite a controversy in London, which is what images like that are meant to do. They’re meant to basically cause a debate in the public: 'Is this something we want to be involved in?' How can you decide to have a war if you are not fully informed?"
"The Most Beautiful Suicide" (1947)
Evenlyn McHale committed suicide on May 12th, 1947 by leaping from the 86th floor observatory deck of the Empire State Building and landing on a United Nations limousine. The photo, snapped about 4 minutes after the fall by photography student Robert C. Wiles, was published in Life Magazine with the caption:
“At the bottom of the Empire State Building the body of Evelyn McHale reposes calmly in grotesque bier, her falling body punched into the top of a car."
What's fascinating about this photo is that McHale fell from the top of a building into a vehicle and yet her body seems to remain intact, without trauma, and her clothes and accessories undisturbed. The truth was far from what it seemed, as she reportedly "fell apart" as they removed her body. Her suicide photo would go down as iconic and was titled, "The Most Beautiful Suicide." Ironically, Evelyn wrote a suicide note that stated:
“I don’t want anyone in or out of my family to see any part of me. Could you destroy my body by cremation? I beg of you and my family – don’t have any service for me or remembrance for me."
