A few years back one of the big photo magazines published a list of “the 5 most memorable photos” which included:
The flag-raising at Iwo Jima
Girl screaming over dead body at Kent State
Execution of VC prisoner
MacArthur’s return to Leyte Gulf
Robert Kennedy lying on the floor after being shot (the first photo at this site)
Personally, I had never recalled seeing the last two photos prior to this list, and have hardly ever seen them since.
There were so many cameras watching the WTC attacks, was there any one photo that stands out as most memorable from 9/11?
As a non-American, I can tell you that just about the only photos so far mentioned that came to mind were the Hindenberg disaster and the Wright brothers’ flight.
Marilyn holding her skirt down over the subway grating? Has that been mentioned yet?
I’d put my money on the Earth photo taken from Apollo 17. It was the first (and possibly still the only) photo where the full sphere is lit by daylight. I’d say a good 90% of the photos you see of the earth are reproductions of this one. Most of the others are composites.
Of course, i’d also put Iwo Jima, the Napalm girl, the VC excution, and the Hindenburg up there.
As a side note, the Oswald pic always reminds me of this.
I think I will add a recent photo- the firemen raising the flag over ground zero- I don’t know if this photo will stand over time but for the time being it is well known. At least in the U.S.
I wonder if the most famous photograph in the world might be different from that in the US? I think it’s probably very much a individual cultural/national thing. If you want sheer numbers, Mao might be the most famous photo in the world.
In my sick and twisted mind, the first photo that came to mind was the Issue 34 cover of National Lampoon magazine. Take one part firearm and one part dog; sell a lot of magazines and get tons of publicity.
The second photo was Iwo Jima, followed closely by the Eddie Adams photo of the Saigon street execution.
I had hoped to have a fairly firm factual answer but it looks as though no one has a firm answer (thanks for the great ideas though). As I mentioned in the OP “famous” is a nebulous concept. I guess “most widely distributed,” “most reproduced” or “most recognized” would be better criteria.
China Guy also makes a good point in that nearly all the photos mentioned are closely tied to US history (no doubt this is, at least in part, reflective of the SDMB makeup).
If the moderators feel so inclined please bounce this to IMHO.
Most sites I visited on google think that the Iwo Jima photograh, fake as it was, is the most widely reproduced photograph in the world, though they offer no evidence, which is why I can’t be bothered citing them.
The funny thing is, the best photos in the world have a huge luck element to them. If the Iowo Jima photographer had snapped the shutter a second later, the soldiers in the back of the “pile” would have just been standing there. Same for the Ali photo: supposedly a second later, Ali went to a neutral corner.
Having just returned from S. America, I’d say that Che is much more famous than one would suspect. He’s everywhere- on t-shirts, and CD covers (a bit ironic) mostly.
I’ll grant that the Apollo 17 picture is of a “full earth”, with none of it in shadow. But do you really think that that one is more famous than the Apollo 8 picture of the earth rising over the lunar horizon?
Although I have no cite, I recall many years ago reading that the most reproduced photograph of all time was the picture on the Kraft Macaroni and Cheese box.
Having read the others listed in this thread, I have to admit there are more universally “famous” ones than this, but the image of firefighter Chris Fields carrying 1-year-old Baylee Almon from the Oklahoma City bombing (which won a 1996 Pulitzer Prize) is the first one that sprang to my mind for some reason.
