h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Photographs are everywhere right, and there are many we see time and time again, but i wastrying to think what the most famous photo of all time would be, and i was stumped. There are a few really well known ones, but i was wondering what the first pictures that came to YOUR mind were when you read this.

Please post them here, the responses will be usefull for my class.

So the images i though of were:

Che Guevara - You know the one, on all the posters and t-shirts
Sgt Pepper - Peter Blakes album sleeve photo
Napalm Children - The little Vietnamese girl on fire
Buzz Aldrin - Armstrongs photo on the moon.
Iwo Jima - Rosenthals raising of the flag
Col Loan - Street exection in Vietnamby Eddie Adams

What's missing?

If you want to add still pictures taken from television clips,

JFK assasination
The Space Shuttle Challenger exploding

That (WWII?) picture of the sailor kissing a girl in New York is supposed to be pretty famous -- seems like I remember reading somewhere that it was the most-purchased photographic print in America or something like that. However, I don't know if anyone outside our Yankee borders has any idea what I'm talking about.


Mikey

ps -- there are some photos from the wedding of Prince Charles & Diana that have a large amount of global recognizability, too.

I thought of the American soldiers on Iwo Jima raising their flag.
The Vietnamese girl fleeing napalm.
St Paul's Cathedral, London glimpsed through smoke in WW11.
Earthrise as seen by astronauts orbiting the moon.
Edmund Hilary and Sherpa Tensing on the summit of Mount Everest.

Ansell Adams - Half Dome, nuff said
Henri Cartier-Bresson - The two lovers kissing under a Paris streetlight (was it candid or was it posed?)
The photo of St Paul's cathedral standing amid the smoke and devastation of the blitz

umm this photo by ansell adams taken in the moolight can't remember what its called. meant to be pretty famous.

The backview of the girl on a tennis court rubbing her bare bottom - you know the one I mean.

However, the first one that came to my mind has already been mentioned - Che Guevara.

I'm going for earthrise as seen from the moon.

While we're on the subject of cheesy posters, what about the moody B+W profile shot of the 'hunky' guy cradling a baby?
Titled 'tenderness' or somesuch rubbish, you'd know it if you saw it.

Apart from that it's got to be Guevara, really.

The photo of Russian soldiers hanging their flag on the ruins of the Reichstag in 1945 was the first one that sprang to my mind.

The most familiar Che Guevara image for me is not the Korda photo itself but the poster painting based on it.

Azara

Marilyn Monroe - either the face that Andy Warhol used or the one standing over the air vent showing her legs

Vietnamese girl.
The (Vietnamese?) man being executed in the street with a pistol held to his head.
The Israeli man hiding with his son on a street corner and his son is shot.
The burning Tibetan monk.

But the most famous image (with lots of photos) rather than a single photo will eventually be the World Trade Centre. Unless something worse happens in the age of the camera pointing everywhere.

It's often the most shocking that stick in the memory.

PP

I'm sure it'll be right up there in the pantheon of memorable images, but I doubt it'll outrank the aftermath at Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

But there doesn't seem to be ONE picture that encapusulates that

Mr. PP you refer to the picture of "The Israeli man hiding with his son on a street corner and his son is shot", if you are talking about the recent photo, it was a Palestinian man and his son hiding in a street corner not an Israeli.

I reckon most if not all the most 'famous'(?) 'photos are related to a current or past tragedy. Why is this?
Anyhow, my choices are..
1. The WTC (any of them)
2. Andy W's Marilyn.

As an aside, don't most 'photos' that spring to mind actually originate from television coverage? Vietnam,Challenger, israel/pallistine, etc.....

my most memorable t.v. 'moment' was, as a boy, watching Armstrong land on the moon. A promise of so much hope and better things to come. What a wasted opportunity!!!!

For me its an image from the Gulf War of a horribly burnt Iraqi soldier sitting dead in the bombed out remains of his truck on the Basra road back to Iraq. Somehow I get the feeling we will shortly be seeing a whole new load of similar images

Re posts 14 and 16. Yes of course, sorry. However, the nationality seems irrelevant since it makes the violance no less shocking and barbaric. Indeed is this not one of the major problems with the notion of nationality?

PP

What about the picture of the palestinian boy standing in front of the israili tank?