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.
this portrait of Frederick Douglass—an escaped slave who had become a lauded speaker, writer, and abolitionist agitator—is a striking exception. Northeastern Ohio was a center of abolitionism prior to the Civil War, and Douglass knew that this picture, one of an astonishing number that he commissioned or posed for, would be seen by ardent supporters of his campaign to end slavery. Douglass was an intelligent manager of his public image and likely guided Miller in projecting his intensity and sheer force of character. As a result, this portrait demonstrates that Douglass truly appeared “majestic in his wrath,” as the nineteenth-century feminist Elizabeth Cady Stanton observed.
Malcolm X holding an M2, looking cool as hell
Bad trigger discipline though
Communists defeated fascism.
We won 20th century.
We will win 21st century.
Seeing how things are now, I don’t think communists can take much more of this winning
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.
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.
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
It hasn’t happened yet. Not much longer though maybe 10 years at most.
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*
I have many good ones, but i think my favourite is this one:
It’s from the famous victory parade in Moscow in 24.06.1945, Japan and USSR were not at war yet, so in a truly masterful trolling stroke, Japan was invited to parade to celebrate defeat of their own allies. On the photo you can see Japanese army colonel and a navy officer (hat visible partially) congratulate marshal Zhukov while French, British and American officers are waiting in line.
As of why, it never fail to make me smile.
Buncha queer people having a costume party at the Institute for Sexual Science in Berlin, which was the world’s first queer clinic and where the foundations of what we today call Gender Affirming Care were developed.
This is Emir Seyyid Mir Mohammed Alim Khan, the last Emir of Bukhara.
The emirate existed from 1785
This is a pre-WW1 colored photograph (1911) by Prokudin-Gorsky
Great choice. I love his pictures, they look so good, it’s as if he had traveled back in time with a digital camera.
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”.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Boy_Standing_by_the_Crematory
This one. The cost of any war summarized in one picture.
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.
