Omaha Beach, Normandy, France [1944]

Another famous photograph from Robert Capa. This one was taken on June 6, 1944 (D-Day), on the first assault wave on Omaha Beach. Capa took 108 pictures in the first couple of hours of the invasion. However, a staff member at Life made a mistake in the darkroom; he set the dryer too high and melted the emulsion in the negatives. Only eight frames in total were recovered.

The plight of Kosovo refugees [1999]

The photo is part of The Washington Post’s Pulitzer Prize-winning entry (2000) showing how a Kosovar refugee Agim Shala, 2, is passed through a barbed wire fence into the hands of grandparents at a camp run by United Arab Emirates in Kukes, Albania. The members of the Shala family were reunited here after fleeing the conflict in Kosovo.

reichstag flag

Soviet Union soldiers Raqymzhan Qoshqarbaev and Georgij Bulatov raising the flag on the roof of Reichstag building in Berlin, Germany in May, 1945.

burning monk

As a protest to the Diệm slow and unreliable reforms in Vietnam, the Buddhist monks have resorted to immolation, such as this Mahayana Buddhist monk, Thỉch Quảng Đức. Đức burned himself alive across the outskirts of Saigon, mainly because of the harshness done by the South Vietnam government to his fellow Buddhist monks.

Đức was re-cremated after he burned himself; his heart meanwhile remained in one piece, and because of this he was regarded as a Bodhisattva by the other Buddhist monks and followers. His act of self-immolation increased the pressure on the Diệm administration to implement their reform laws in South Vietnam.

Segregated water fountains

Picture of segregated water fountains in North Carolina taken by Elliott Erwitt

The Kiss at Times Square

“The Kiss at Times Square” By Alfred Eisenstaedt

At the end of World War II, in US cities everybody went to the streets to salute the end of combat. Friendship and unity were everywhere. This picture shows a sailor kissing a young nurse in Times Square. The fact is he was kissing every girl he encountered and for that kiss, this particular nurse slapped him.

Starving boy and a missionary

World Press Photo of the Year: 1980 Mike Wells, United Kingdom. Karamoja district, Uganda, April 1980. Starving boy and a missionary. About the image Wells felt indignant that the same publication that sat on his picture for five months without publishing it, while people were dying, entered it into a competition. He was embarrassed to win as he never entered the competition himself, and was against winning prizes with pictures of people starving to death.