https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Standing_by_the_Crematory
This one. The cost of any war summarized in one picture.
It’s a pity that my app only shows the link text to the photograph instead of the image itself, but I’m glad, in some way, that now I am aware of the existence of such an image of loss. It’s pure loss.
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Malcolm X holding an M2, looking cool as hell
Bad trigger discipline though
The first photo of a black hole is the most historically significant “first photo of x” that happened in my life time and that I actually understood its historical significance when it came out. So I’d say that’s probably my favourite.
Not a photo.
It’s the output of an AI model trained on simulations of black holes being asked to fill in the gaps from sparse observations.
Someone: takes a selfie with their phone under low lighting conditions
You: "not a photo, it’s the output of an algorithm taking the luminosity from an array of light detectors, giving information of the colour and modifying it according to lighting conditions, and then using specific software to sharpen the original capture*
Nah, the hivemind is being cringe as shit rn.
Recreating an image with Ai is not the same even remotely from capturing raw data directly from a digital sensor and cranking the exposure up.
The Ai is approximating what it sees, digital sensors are not, they don’t approximate anything. It’s either there or they don’t see it.
objective and subjective
Modern phone cameras use AI to fill in the gaps in low light photos.
Your brain uses assumptions to fill in missing data like the blind spot in your retina.
The gateway to the Ai processing is still the sensor used. Modern mirrorless digital cameras can use Ai tools internally, but the starting medium is always what is captured to begin with.
Wasn’t the gateway to the black hole image the measurements NASA made?
It is hard to pick one, but this photo has always stuck with me. That is a picture from the Dust Bowl during the Great Depression.
The series of pictures apparently inspired Peter Gabriel for the song “don’t give up”.
First moon landing. It shows what we are capable of
We can go further. We need to support science and dream.
We already have. We have pictures. Oh you mean flying there like Peter Pan and living a Star Trek life? Never going to happen.
Kubrick can make good movies.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P6MOnehCOUw
I heard that Kubrick was such a perfectionist, he insisted they shot on location.
Good one.
srsly go back on facebook
I really should have added that /j, eh?
you cannot imagine my ptsd from these people/bots. mb. and it was actually spielberg
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This one really affected me. It’s one of the first images from the surface of Mars. I was quite young, and it clicked in me that other planets actually exists and are out there in space.
It reminds me of places like the Nevada desert.
Deepwater Horizon sinking in the Gulf of Mexico on April 22, 2010.
It caused an equivalent oil spill of 4.9 million barrels and exposed the surrounding wildlife to toxic materials, covering thousands of animals in oil. The cleanup efforts took years.
A prime example of humans messing up this planet for their own gains.
Oil executives aren’t humans
dehumanizing people never leads to something good.
Looks like a screencap from District 9 or some other Sci-Fi movie
OP’s photo is my favorite, so I will have to mention my second favorite (though calling it a “favorite” feels off).
This photo was taken in 2003 in Iraq. This man is comforting his son. They are being held in an American camp. IIRC to this day we don’t know what happened to these two.
I think if I had to explain the last 25 years to a time-traveler, this would be the one photo I would choose.
Had never seen that one. Powerful.
Neocons have been dehumanising Arabs for a very long time.
US Liberals are still doing it to this day. One of their heroes, Obama, dropped an average of 80 bombs per day on the ME and North Africa.
After winning the Nobel peace prize, he dropped an average of 30k bombs / year (80 per day) during his presidency, mostly on Muslim countries, 2, 3. In 2016 alone, dropped 26,171 bombs in the Middle East and North Africa, up 3000 from the previous year. The countries bombed include Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Libya, and Somalia.
President Taft riding a water buffalo. Always gives me a chuckle.
Free Huey is a great one:
Maybe that time a dove landed on Fidel’s shoulder during a speech right after the victory of the Cuban revolution.
The terror of war.
Nobody wins in war, and I hate how angry this photo makes me feel.
Nobody wins in war
The Vietnamese won, as a matter of fact, and liberated themselves from colonialism as a consequence
True, and admirable. But the cost of winning, even if losing isn’t an option, is still loss.
So many people lost.
Yeah but I’d shift the phrasing from “nobody wins from war” to “carpet bombing of civilians by an imperialist power is evil”
Don’t forget napalm and defoliants.
Yeah true. It’s fucking sick. Can’t really say it any other way.
Margaret Hamilton standing next to listings of the software that she and her MIT team produced for the Apollo Project.
I love her, and the code she used is adorable:
“LOL Memory” (Core Rope): The code was literally woven into hardware by women in factories, dubbed “Little Old Lady” memory.
The self-immolation of Thich Quang Duc never fails to amaze me. It’s just unreal.
And Antonio Turok’s photograph of the 1991 total eclipse of the sun in Chiapas, Mexico. This one because even when I know what an eclipse is and how does it happen, there’s a moment in my head when I think “What if it never ends? What if everything stays like this forever?” I see that instant of terror in this photo.
First time I’m seeing the second one, that’s amazing, thanks for sharing.
Believe me, that photograph can’t be unseen, it’s like the Sun itself is watching you, mad at you. Sorry I couldn’t find something of better quality to upload.
6-year old Ruby Bridges walking to school.
This picture was always so powerful to me. I think I had that one famous illustrated storybook about Ruby Bridges.
On the one hand, very important photo to understand the context of the time.
On the other hand, monstrous that a child going to school was such a big deal and so much attention was focused on her. Can’t imagine that making a positive impression on a child.
What’s the context for this? What country?
This is in the United States, during segregation.
The little girl in the picture is Ruby Bridges. In 1960, she was one of the first Black kids to integrate a school. In this picture, she is walking to an all-Whites school and the guards are protecting her because the racist white adults wanted to harm her just for wanting to go to school.
Ruby Bridges is still alive today.
Thanks. Did you just expect everyone to just know this when you posted the photo?
You guys have such a crazy history. And present.
It’s a very famous photo here.
Not here
wouldn’t really expect it to be
Cheers. 1960… it blows my mind.
When federal agents were actually protecting minorities.
Pretty much only the federal agents who were directly ordered to though, most of the rest of them were busy putting the boot on minorities here and everywhere else in the world.
yeah this is the era of COINTELPRO, they were only helping minorities while on camera
Oooh that’s a good one!
I read about Ruby Bridges when I was a child in NZ, it made a huge impression on me.
This one always makes me melancholic:
Such a big turning point in time, captured on a photograph.
Is that Batman on a horse?
I’d have guessed emperor Wilhelm II, but it seems to just be a German officer.
Batman on his bathorse
What’s an orse and why does it need a bath?
Similar ones:
WW1 cavalry soldiers who still carried a lance, for charging against infantry.
(Even in the later stage of the war, when they already had steel helmets and gas masks)
