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“i like any kind of food. whatever’s there, i buy it. hot dog one day, the next chinese food, roast beef sandwich.” —walter

philadelphia’s homeless, 1985

photo by tom gralish, from his pulitzer prize award series philadelphia’s homeless - 1985

early dawn in the countryside in heilongjiang province, china, december 21, 1964

photo by li zhensheng, from red-color news soldiers

“…in a radiant dawn over farmland we see two young peasants, presented as both humble and heroic, setting off in search of manure to fertilize the fields. there are also the parades, the patriotic songs that even the children sing, the female soldiers, the posters with mao’s image…” but these pictures are paired with the images of public trials, pillory, placards with insults hung around people’s necks and capital punishment. li, with the red band of a soldier of information on his arm, took the pictures and hid them away. and twenty years later, after one of the longest development processes in the history of photojournalism, he finally printed them. 

a couple walks down dircksenstraße, near alexanderplatz, berlin, germany, 1945

the burning building behind them was nothing special in the chaotic days at the end of the war

a mother holding a portrait of her son, missing since the war in cypus in 1974

photo by nikos economopoulos, cypus, 1997, from magnum magnum

a rapatronic photo of the rope trick effect, the name for the lines and spikes which can emanate from the fireball of a nuclear explosion just after detonation, from the tumbler-snapper test series in nevada, 1952 by lawrence livermore national laboratory

the fireball has a surface temperature of over 20,000 kelvins and emits huge amounts of visible light radiation. the rope tricks which protrude from the bottom are caused by the heating, rapid vaporization and then expansion of the mooring cables tethering the tower supporting the nuclear bomb at the start of the test

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one of the most starkly violent cover photos in LIFE’s long history*, a us marine demolition team blasting out a cave on hill 382. battle of iwo jima, march 1945

photo by w. eugene smith

us marine holding a wounded and dying baby found in the mountains. battle of saipan island, june 1944

photo by w. eugene smith

cpn - massaspel met portretten van communistische leiders, amsterdam, 1947

photo by dolf kruger

pfc angelo b. reina, 391st inf. regt., guards a lonely oahu beach position. kahuku, oahu. rosenberg, hawaii, march 1945

don mccullin’s most celebrated image entitled shellshocked us marine, hue, vietnam

it was taken during the battle for the city of hue in february 1968 and, in its stillness and quiet intensity, says as much about the effects of war on the individual psyche as many of mccullin’s more graphic depictions of conflict and carnage. the eyes that stare out beneath the grimy helmet are not staring at the camera lens, but beyond it, into nowhere

attack, 1941, taken by dmitri baltermants

by the end of november 1941, the germans had already suffered 250,000 casualties in russia. in december, the russians began their counterattack. when first published, baltermants’ photo of charging soldiers was criticized as it depicted half-a-man, and was thus inconsistent with socialist realist standards. it has since become one of the most enduring war photos ever taken.

posted by nostalgiya, via kvetchlandia

supports going up after battle to relieve the front trenches, note the three observation balloons above the bright cloud