Dag: 24 mei 2026

The world was still reeling from the assassination of John F Kennedy when photographer Robert H Jackson was on hand to catch the decisive moment (Cartier-Bresson would be proud) that a vigilante idea of justice was metered out to the man who had changed the course of history. What’s striking in the image is the incongruity of all. It almost looks like a normal crowded scene of people, but for Oswald grimacing and the assassin, Dallas nightclub owner, Jack Ruby holding a gun. The photo won a Pulitzer Prize for its author. Ruby was tried for murder, but appealed his conviction. He died before the start of a new trial. The power of the image lives on though.

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Capturing a moment of incredible individual bravery, Jeff Widener’s photo of a single protestor facing down a line of tanks in Tiananmen Square in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 became a symbol of defiance against oppression.
The photo earned Widener worldwide acclaim and nomination for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize. The high vantage point of the image showed the scale of the unidentified man’s bravery, who was holding two shopping bags, grounding the act in the everyday.
Taken from his hotel window after a stray rock hit him in the head during a mob scene on the Chang-An Boulevard the previous day, Widener almost didn’t capture the famous image and had to borrow a roll of film from an Australian tourist staying in the hotel.

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The Beatles were the biggest band in the world as the end of the sixties approached, but were coming to their Indian Summer by the time of their penultimate album, Abbey Road, when Scottish photographer Macmillan was hired for the shoot, after being introduced to the band by Yoko Ono.

Photographed outside the Beatles’ studio, Macmillan perched on a stepladder in the middle of Abbey Road and took six pictures of the Beatles crossing the street, with a policeman on hand to control traffic. One of those images would become synonymous with the Fab Four and would be seen the world over.

The anonymous location of a crossing in the quiet north London neighbourhood of St. John’s Wood has become a pilgrimage for tourists to this day, highlighting the impact that the photo has had on devoted pop fans for over 50 years.

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Marilyn Monroe’s star remains as high today, as it did in 1954 when photographer Robert Shaw arranged a publicity shot for the film Seven Year Itch outside the Trans-Lux Theatre on Lexington Avenue, at around 2am.

Despite the late hour, crowds gathered to watch one of Hollywood’s most adored sex symbols cement her image. The photo is synonymous with Monroe’s image as a contemporary Aphrodite and an icon of beauty and glamor, but it proved too much for her then husband, Joe DiMaggio, who was there and became enraged with jealousy. They divorced weeks later.

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Portraying a U.S. Navy sailor kissing a stranger on Victory over Japan Day (V-J Day) in Times Square at the end of World War II, Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photo has become one of the most recognisable and imitated photos of the 20th century. The couple in the photo remained anonymous for years, before a 2016 book revealed them to be George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman.

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Inside Roman forts in Britain, communal latrines were built with stone benches lined with keyhole-shaped openings. Beneath them ran a constant flow of water to carry waste away, often connected to larger drainage systems. Many forts along Hadrian’s Wall included these facilities, showing how standardized Roman engineering was, even in remote provinces.There were no partitions. Using the latrine was a social activity. Instead of toilet paper, Romans used a shared sponge on a stick, called a tersorium, rinsed in running water between uses.Roman military forts housed anywhere from 500 to 1,000 soldiers, and maintaining hygiene was crucial to preventing disease in close quarters. Added fact:  Rome’s sewer system, including the famous Cloaca Maxima, dates back to at least the 6th century BC.

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No people were captured because the exposure was 5-10 mins so all the people and traffic got fused and disappeared into the backdrop. Except one man that have a shoes cleaned on bottom left corner.The image is widely attributed to Louis Daguerre, who developed the daguerreotype process, the first commercially viable form of photography.

Daguerre exposed a polished silver-coated copper plate from his studio window overlooking the Boulevard du Temple, a busy thoroughfare at the time. Early photographic chemistry required long exposure times, typically 5 to 10 minutes, because the light sensitivity of the materials was extremely low. During that interval, moving elements, carriages, pedestrians, animals, did not register clearly on the plate. They passed through the frame too quickly, effectively erasing themselves from the final image.

One figure remains visible: a man standing still long enough to be captured while having his shoes polished. The bootblack and customer stayed in place for several minutes, allowing their outlines to be recorded, making them among the first humans ever photographed.
Added fact: Daguerre announced his process in 1839, and the French government acquired the rights and released it “free to the world,” accelerating the global spread of photography within just a few years.

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More than a symbolic flag raising during World War II, Joe Rosenthal’s 1945 photo transcended its time and location to become a symbol of national pride and unity in the war years. Today the image has been immortalized in a statue at the United States Marine Corps War Memorial in Arlington, Virginia.

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