Busy was the Chinese Communist Party in the first few days after it brutally suppressed pro-democracy demonstrators on June 4, 1989. It produced a series of horrifying photos and a photo book to justify its brutal suppression.
Category: Society
Tiananmen – The Sunday Times Magazine, 1989
Four months after the massacre, as the Communist regimes in Eastern Europe also looking increasingly fragile, the Sunday Times magazine devoted 15 pages to the tragedy and analysed its effect on China’s future.
The Conquest of Everest – The Times
At 11:30 am on May 29, 1953, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay became the first human beings to conquer Mount Everest. The Times scooped the news.
The Explorer’s Heart – Vanity Fair, 2002
In 2002, Jonas Karlsson traveled 28,000 miles over eight months to put together a profile of ten great explorers, as “the modern age of exploration is coming to a clamorous close.”
The Way-Out Way of Life, 1962
In fall 1962, California surpassed New York in population to become the most populous state in the United States. The Look magazine commemorated this in the special issue focused on the state.
The New China by Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1959
In 1958, LIFE asked Henri Cartier-Bresson to return to China, a country he last covered in at the outbreak of the Communist takeover in 1949. Cartier-Bresson was largely sympathetic to the Communist cause and was mostly embedded on a guided tour. While his photographs do not present a critique of Communism, he nonetheless witnessed the beginnings of the disastrous Great Leap Forward.
Uncanny China by Rolf Gilhausen, 1958-59
Starting in December 27, 1958, Stern magazine in Germany started publishing a series of articles and photos on China that would eventually cover nearly 70 pages of the magazine.
Tiananmen Square by Patrick Zachmann, 1989
Patrick Zachmann was one of the very first foreign photographers to be in Beijing in 1989, having arrived there coincidentally just before the protests began.
Penal Colony at Perm by Jane Evelyn Atwood, 1992
In the 1990s, Jane Evelyn Atwood visited over 40 prisons in twelve countries across Europe and the United States over a period of one decade to document female incarceration. She managed to get access into some of the world’s worst jails, including death row.
The Soviet Mafia by Hans-Jürgen Burkard
Organized crime had been rampant in the dying Soviet Union for years, fueled by economic shortages and corruption. Around the time Burkard was documenting the Soviet mafia, there were up to 5,000 gangs plundering the state, and every 22 minutes a person was murdered.