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The story of the Tank Man photo by its photographer
- ggm 5y agoOf his failing flash, and lens situation: I could just imagine Robert Capa and Larry Burroughs chuckling down from heaven over a couple of cold beers. Let's remember Capa's most famous shots of D day landings were botched by incompetent developing and only a few frames were usable. (I think somebody else blew the developing, not Capa but I'm not 100% sure)
- Dah00n 5y agoI at first thought Tank Man meant the picture from the gulf war of a burnt husk of a human pictured while trying to escape a burning tank. Such a horrible picture.
- layoutIfNeeded 5y agohttps://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dont-photograph-people-like-mom-will-think-war-see-tv-gulf-war-1991/ https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/dont-photograph-people-like... You forgot to mention that it’s from the Highway of Death, where US forces bombed a retreating iraqi vehicle column to ashes. The death toll was zero on the US side versus 1000-2000 on the iraqi side.
- Dah00n 5y agoWell, unlike what the downvote brigade thought, I wasn't trying to point fingers. Now I don't need to.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- JumpCrisscross 5y agoIt's remarkable to imagine how different the world might have been if the Tiananmen uprising had succeeded. Democracy with Chinese characteristics, or whatever. A true ideological and moral competitor to the West.
- axguscbklp 5y agoIs there any good reason to think that the Tiananmen uprising participants, had they gotten power, would actually have brought about democracy? Given what had happened during the Cultural Revolution, I can understand why some Chinese would be uneasy about militant students. To actually shift a society to democracy may require much more than just a revolution led by a small vanguard. If society as a whole is not ready, such revolutions might tend to just lead to a new, worse dictatorship taking power. And this may be the case regardless of whatever genuinely good intentions the more humane revolutionary leaders might have - in practice, they may be just purged and replaced by brutal opportunists if the revolution succeeds. I also wish for a more liberal China, I am just trying to explore some of the complexities of such events. To be fair, if by "if the Tiananmen uprising had succeeded", you mean "if the Tiananmen uprising had made China democratic", then some of my points do not make sense. It is just that, based on my reading about history, I know that successful revolutions often lead to outcomes that are very different from what idealists who root for those revolutions have in mind.
- genericone 5y agoThe college students (cultural revolution) were useful idiots egged on by ccp leadership. And they were absolutely authoritarian btw, not at all democratic, so its a difficult comparison.
- magicsmoke 5y agoMore specifically Mao than the entire CCP leadership. The cultural revolution was an attempted coup by Mao to regain power after he was sidelined by his disastrous economic policies. It also really colored the viewpoints of the post Mao CCP leadership on populist movements. Specifically, Deng who was in charge during 1989 probably saw echos of the same students that exiled him into the countryside and crippled his son now marching again in Tiananmen square.
- ceejayoz 5y agoI'm not sure the "militant students" framing is very fair here, but it's otherwise a good point - we saw in the Arab Spring that the end result wasn't really democracy, and it's a good question which way China might've gone.
- zeeshanqureshi 5y agoWhat an incredible story this is, an absolute must read for all.
- duxup 5y agoIt's such a powerful / stark image. After the horrors that occurred , one man who looks like he was going about their day stands in front of a column of tanks. For a little while he stops an oppressive the state, or at least a small bit of it ... and then like a lot of people involved vanishes and we just don't know.
- altcognito 5y agoThere was so much optimism at the time that China would reject communism and move to a model of self governance by its people.
- jacquesm 5y agoEventually that will happen. But the chances of it happening soon are now lower than before, because the Chinese powers that be are now hip to how quickly things can get out of hand. They have stepped up monitoring of their citizens considerably in spite of an outward appearance of openness.
- Daho0n 5y agoI doubt it will for a long time. Democracy Perception Index (chaired by former NATO general-secretary and former State minister of Denmark Anders Fogh Rasmussen) found that 77% of Chinese citizens see their government having "just the right amount of democracy". The exact same number they found in Fogh's home country Denmark.
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- eunos 5y ago> self governance by its people Aren't 90 million members of CPC Chinese people?
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- altcognito 5y agoI guess it’s a great system for those who get in, it isn’t universal suffrage, and there isn’t a system of checks and balances. And then there is the justice system...
- cm2187 5y agoI imagine HN must be temporary blocked in China right now if this story is on the front page. Did someone submitted this as payback for all the pro-china comments on the covid lab-leak threads?
- jacquesm 5y agoPlease don't do this. Thank you.
- hateful 5y ago(2016)
- iso1631 5y agoTank man is popular today because somebody noticed duckduckgo/bing were censoring search results This was raised on HN [0] and immediately flagged by "long standing boring users of the site" [1] There was then another story about the Tank Man photo, which was marked as "dupe", despite never having been posted before As of now (1919 GMT) the original DDG bug hasn't been fixed [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27394925 [1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397406 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27397406 [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27395028
- kelnos 5y agoLooks like both DDG and Bing are showing results for "tank man" now. I do wonder what the reason for the issue was; while I'm sure many people would like to believe it's some nefarious China-directed global suppression, I would guess the explanation is far more mundane.
- stonogo 5y agoThe results they're showing are not of the famous picture of Tiananmen Square's "tank man" incident, however. Today is the 32nd anniversary of the violent suppression by the Chinese government of that protest.
- 1123581321 5y agoDDG, at the time of this comment, isn't showing results for the man standing in front of the tanks for tank man. Moderate search shows generic military hardware photos. Safe search: off shows no results.
- LAC-Tech 5y ago6th, 7th and 14th result in image search for me.
- 1123581321 5y ago
- SubiculumCode 5y agoIts a shame that Microsoft does not have a backbone. If I were a leader in the Biden administration, I would give Microsoft a lashing.
- josefresco 5y agoRelated: https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man https://www.bing.com/images/search?q=tank+man
- deleted 5y ago[deleted]
- ryanmarsh 5y agoI thought this was referencing the other (based) tank man, Marvin John Heemeyer, who died 17 years ago today.
- anonAndOn 5y agoThere are a few different photographers who managed to get a picture of Tank Man from different vantage points.[0] There's also a little known street view angle which, IMHO, is even more profound.[1] [0]https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-tank-man-of-tiananmen/ https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/03/behind-the-scenes-... [1]https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/behind-the-scenes-a-new-angle-on-history/ https://lens.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/04/behind-the-scenes-...
- danbolt 5y agoIt's interesting to know how Jeff's innocuous camera didn't have autofocus at the time, not to mention how he was doing a lot of the ISO-related math when looking to take the shot. I've done manual black-and-white photography before with older cameras before, but I take pictures with my smartphone so freely these days it becomes hard to conceptualize the amount of work Jeff had to do.
- duxup 5y agoI prefer a digital camera with the related speed, aperture, iso settings in physical button form. I have an old Fuji x100T that I like to use. It's not so much just getting the math right as much as what you're giving and taking with each setting. Your camera makes the decision about what the right math is, but there's a lot of possible 'right' settings depending on the situation.
- ISL 5y agoThe X100T is old? So, apparently, am I. :).
- porphyra 5y agoThe Nikon F3 he used has automatic metering so I don't think he had to do any ISO-related math. And manual focus with its great split prism viewfinder isn't that hard, although obviously more challenging than autofocus.
- rkagerer 5y ago“This guy is going to screw up my composition”.
- threshold 5y agoShame on Microsoft.
- Dig1t 5y agoWow this is so interesting, I didn't know there were so many more photos of these events taken by this photographer. The image of the burning tank is especially striking.
- vmception 5y agoWait the tank man photo was taken after the first night of massacres!? Man I thought it was before
- lostlogin 5y agoIt really changes the context doesn't it? It's pretty incredible.
- Scheherazade 5y agoSomething smells off. Especially these sentences: “ I never ceased to be awed by the courage of ordinary citizens risking dangerous rescues that immediately followed the massacre. Press reports had claimed hundreds or thousands of people had died during the military crackdown.” Presuming he was right at the scene of action, why does he pass the buck to the claims of ‘press reports’? And it's also suspicious the word 'massacre' is only used once before said buck passing. The tactics of the writing style are more akin to CIA psyops.
- ChrisArchitect 5y ago(2016)!
- giantg2 5y agoThe first thought when I heard tank man was the guy that built a tank out of a bulldozer.
- giantg2 5y agoWhy downvote? A few days ago was the 14th anniversary of that. It seems people are downvoting a legitimate difference in experience.
- psychomugs 5y agoI love the story behind Charlie Cole's alternate perspective, where he had to hide his film in a toilet tank.
- davesque 5y agoAmazing that the Chinese government in power today is the same as the one that deployed the tanks in that photograph to mow down its own citizens. Even more amazing that American celebrities such as LeBron James and John Cena see it fit to parrot that same government's propaganda for the sake of dollars. Never in my wildest dreams did I think I'd live to see something like it. The word "pathetic" falls utterly short in describing it.
- _tik_ 5y agoEqually the same or equally different with the the govt that shoot its own anti war citizen in 70's. The institution is the same. But the approach handling public protest is different compare to that era.
- silexia 5y agoWe have a misconception that a government that mistreats it's people can be overthrown. Most "revolutions" require extensive military and economic support from foreign military powers. The American Revolution is a great example of this. Americans tell ourselves we were led by the Boston Tea Party, the Declaration of Independence, and George Washington to obtaining our freedom from the British. The truth is we likely would not have succeeded without the military and economic support of major world powers France and Spain at the time. The Chinese people have received no foreign support for throwing out the CCP dictators. The West even returned Hong Kong freely. Now Hong Kong is being oppressed and it's people tortured and murdered. And greedy American pop culture figures like LeBron James support totalitarian regimes against freedom fighters. I stopped watching the NBA at that point, and will never take seriously LeBron's support for BLM. He only does what is convenient for him.
- davesque 5y agoCompletely agree. I will never look at LeBron the same way ever again. I mean I always knew he was a self-centered celebrity like the rest of them. But I never considered that he or any other American celebrity would stoop that low. It's one thing for a cohort of secret corporate executives to edit a film for a Chinese release. That in itself is a disaster but feels somehow different. It's completely another thing for a celebrity to get on the air and make statements that directly capitulate to the CCP in broad daylight. It's the kind of thing that makes me want to pinch myself. Makes me feel like I live in a failed timeline in some dystopian sci-fi movie.
- euroderf 5y agoWe know China has an army of net monitors. Ya gotta wonder if now a gang is poring over HN pages like this one, trying to match HN aliases to people IRL so they know to whom to deny visas. Hello there, monitors! Pls don't get me barred from future entry.