Iconic photo ‘The Soiling of Old Glory’ still makes an impact 50 years later; will be featured in "America The Beautiful" exhibit

Via WGBH

By Diane Adame

April 3, 2026

This April 5, 1976 photo of a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, assaulting a Black man, lawyer and civil rights activist Ted Landsmark, with a flagpole won the Pulitzer Prize for spot photography. The photo was taken during a protest against court-ordered desegregation busing.

Stanley Forman (used with permission)

It has been 50 years since the Pulitzer-Prize winning photo “The Soiling of Old Glory” was taken as a busing desegregation protest erupted throughout City Hall Plaza in Boston.

The photo, which was taken on April 5, 1976, shows a young white man gripping an American flag and aiming it at a young Black man during the protest. The image drew national attention for how it vividly captured racial unrest during the busing crisis in the 1970s.

“The photograph has had significant impact over the decades because it was taken during a bicentennial year where the country was celebrating a number of democratic principles which in fact were being contradicted by what the photo depicts,” said Theodore “Ted” Landsmark, the Black man captured in the photograph.

Stanley Forman, the newspaper photographer who took the photo for the Boston Herald American, still remembers that day.

“It was a Monday… I asked the editor, Alvin Saley, what was going on. He told me there was a demonstration — we went to demonstrations every day — it was an anti-busing demonstration at City Hall,” he said. “I asked if I could go to it, and he said, ‘Sure.’”

The protest was one of many happening in Boston at the time ever since the city began busing students outside of their neighborhoods in 1974 in an effort, mandated by the courts, to desegregate schools.

Forman said he was switching his camera lens when he saw a group of white student protesters walking through the plaza.

“I saw a couple of Black men taking the turn, coming up from Court Street to come onto the plaza, and they were attacked,” he said.

“Ted got the worst of it,” he said. “ They threw things at them, they kicked them, knocked them down and in the end, Joseph Rakes, who was holding the flagpole, whacked him in the nose.”

Landsmark said he was on my way to a meeting in Boston City Hall to discuss affirmative action efforts to bring more employment to people of color in the city.

“I thought that if I simply continued to walk straight, I’d be able to get into City Hall without really encountering the front edge of the demonstrators,” he told GBH in an interview remembering the incident. “But a number of the students walked by me and then several circled back, yelling racial epithets at me.”

Michael Curry, a member of the NAACP national board of directors and head of the Massachusetts League of Community Health Centers, said the photo continues to have an impact because it didn’t happen that long ago.

“It made it even more clear for a generation of us that Boston was a tale of two cities, one where people came for opportunity if you were Irish, Italian, Polish, and Jewish,” Curry said, “And another city that had also resisted black political, economic and educational progress in the city.”

Landsmark said he never anticipated that the photo would still be a topic of discussion all these years later.

“Many of the issues that were raised by that photo remain a salient issue, and — unfortunately — unresolved today,” he said. “My hope would be that looking back at it a half century later, we would reflect on the amount of work that remains to be done in order to achieve racial equality in the United States in this year.”

Forman said the photo often gets compared to more recent pictures racial tensions in the U.S.

“The picture gets resurrected every few years because of something happening in this country,” said Forman. “Thankfully, it hasn’t been outdone yet, but nothing lasts forever. Although this picture I think will last the test of time.”

"The Soiling of Old Glory" will be featured in "America The Beautiful", an exhibition of compelling and provocative photographs illustrating America, American life, and the American people as the United States prepares to celebrate its 250th birthday amid the erosion of civil rights, human rights, and democratic norms May 23 - April 9, 2026 at Monroe Gallery of Photography.

CBS Evening News Feature On Stanley Forman's Pulitzer Prize-winning photo of a fatal fire escape collapse

 Via CBS Evening News

July 22, 2025

How a photo of a deadly Boston fire sparked change

In 1975, Stanley Forman took a  Pulitzer Prize-winning photo during a Boston apartment fire. That photo would spur the city to enact new regulations to keep fire escapes safe. Mark Strassmann has the story.

"The Flag Is A Force That Gives Us Meaning"

 Via Field of View

Original article posted on July 12, 2024

"Throughout history, flags have elevated the emotional impact of images, attracting photographers — and photo editors — like moths to a flame."   click to read full article

The article analyzes several photographs, including these by Gallery photographers:

Stanley Forman

The Soiling of Old Glory" Anti-Busing Protest, Boston, 1976

David Butow

January 6, 2021, Washington, DC. Supporters of President Trump battle law enforcement on the West steps of The Capitol during the attack on the day of Joe Biden’s election certification by Congress.

Joe Rosenthal/AP

Marines of the 28th Regiment of the 5th Division Raise the American Flag Atop Mt. Suribachi, Iwo Jima, 1945

"Going down the rabbit hole of photos that are elevated, and in many defined, by flags...."

 

What these men behind a historic photo taken 47 years ago say about race in Boston then and now

 Via WCVB Boston

By Brittany Johnson

July 28, 2023

BOSTON —

The two men who were part of a single historic photograph that captured the essence of racial tension in Boston in 1976 are reflecting on how far the city has come and how far it has to go in order to achieve racial justice.

Ted Landsmark and Stanley Forman met up with WCVB's Brittany Johnson at Boston's City Hall Plaza, where the incident took place.

As Landsmark walked across the plaza, he reflected back to the day a group of protestors attacked him. Landsmark was kicked, hit in the face, and suffered a broken nose. One of the protesters swung the American flag in his direction to use it as a weapon.

"Ironically, on the day when the assault took place, I was on my way to a meeting in City Hall to discuss how the city could open up more job opportunities to contractors of color and to workers of color in the city," Landsmark, who was a young lawyer at the time of the attack, told Johnson.

"I had no expectation that I would encounter a crowd of anti-busing demonstrators," he said. "My mind was fixed on creating opportunities and jobs for young people in the city."

During this time period, Boston was fraught with discrimination and uproar over court-ordered school desegregation.

Stanley Forman

The Soiling of Old Glory" Anti-Busing Protest, Boston, 1976

"Boston half a century ago was fraught with all kinds of discrimination," Landsmark explained. "It affected housing. It affected the police department. It affected schools. It affected our transportation system. Redlining had been in place and had made it virtually impossible for African-Americans to be able to live where they wanted to live in the city. The transportation system was one that discriminated in terms of employment. It was a place that was very uncomfortable for people of color, and African Americans in particular, to live and to have opportunities for career growth and opportunities to really take advantage of all of the educational opportunities that exist within the city."

With the racial climate at the forefront, Landsmark said he knew the attack could transcend into a way for him to speak to larger issues of the civil rights movement.

"From the moment I was attacked in City Hall Plaza, I knew that I was going to be placed in a position to have an opportunity to talk about the issues of race and of access to jobs and education that existed within this region. It was clear to me that people of color, and African-Americans in particular, had been discriminated against for generations, and that at that moment, there was an opportunity for me to have a platform to address those issues in the context of bussing as it was taking place in the city," he said.

The Pulitzer Prize photograph, titled "The Soiling of Old Glory," was taken by photojournalist and former NewsCenter 5 videographer Stanley Forman.

"The day I took that picture, I didn't get — I tell everybody, I didn't get the impact of it. I mean, I ran down and continued on the coverage. They left here (City Plaza), and I just followed them," F0rman said.

"When did you realize the magnitude of what you had?" Johnson asked Forman.

"I think when we were in the office, and the editors were looking at it, and I was looking at it, and they were so frightened it would start a race war," Forman replied. "I think that's when I realized how bad it was. It took a few hours for me to catch on."

"What Stanley and I have realized over time is that the photograph provides an incentive, a platform for us to raise issues around race in the city, not only in terms of what happened in the 1970s but more importantly in terms of what is happening now as we look forward with new generations of individuals who are addressing these same issues of racial justice," said Landsmark.

Landsmark, a long-time civil rights activist and now a professor of public policy at Northeastern University, said Boston has come a long way but said work still needs to be done to achieve racial justice.

"There's been a great deal of change in the city, primarily in the public sector. Our city council is elected and is composed primarily of people of color. For the first time, we have a person of color as mayor within the city, and we've made significant advancement in many of our public sector areas, but we have a huge amount of work to do in the private sector. Our financial services area, our high-tech companies, our universities, our biotech firms all need to do considerably more to open up job opportunities for young people of color in and around the city and need to use their private sector resources and capital to develop job training programs and career opportunities for people within the city," said Landsmark.

"In 2023, did you think you'd still be speaking about achieving racial justice?" Johnson asked Landsmark.

"I was perhaps naïve in believing that by 2023 we would be much further along not only in Boston but nationally in terms of achieving racial justice, in terms of achieving opportunities for African-Americans to be able to be professionals and homeowners and to maintain stability within their families. And it's a little disappointing that we're still struggling today with many of the same issues that we faced in 1976 when I was attacked on City Hall Plaza," he said.

Just down from City Hall Plaza, the NAACP convention was getting underway.

It has been over 40 years since the annual convention was held in the Commonwealth, and Landsmark hopes that the return of the national convention to the city will serve as a tide change in Boston's history.

"Boston is definitely ready to take advantage of this moment, in part because our elected officials have embraced social change, in part because the demographics of who is living in the city have changed so significantly, and in part, because we understand that the future of the city is dependent on the success of people of color in the greater Boston area," Landsmark said.

WCVB

Ted Landsmark and Stanley Forman

The message of the 114th National Convention is "Thriving Together," which is something Landsmark and Forman know a thing or two about, as they are forever attached to the story of "The Soil of Old Glory."

"People have asked me whether I thought Stanley should have intervened somehow," Landsmark shared, as he was standing beside Forman. "And I think that in doing his job of taking the photo at that moment, he contributed to the kind of dialog that we need to have not only in Boston but around the country, around the implications of hate and racial violence and what it is we need to think about doing to eliminate both."

Pulitzer Prize Finalists: Staff of The New York Times including Ashley Gilbertson's Nominated January 6 Photograph of Officer Goodman

Via The New York Times

 

Bands of Jan. 6 rioters roamed the Capitol in a menacing hunt for Congressional adversaries of President Trump. Some were thwarted by a Capitol Police officer, Eugene Goodman, who—after being chased up a stairwell—diverted them from a hallway where senators and staff members were scurrying to safety. Throughout the tense encounter, Officer Goodman never drew his gun. (January 6, 2021/Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times)

View selected photographs by Ashley Gilbertson during the Photography Show presented by AIPAD May 20-22 in the Monroe Gallery of Photography booth #113, Center 415, NYC.

Monroe Gallery Sponsors FREE Streaming of "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro"

 

In association with the current exhibition "Tony Vaccaro at 98", Monroe Gallery is pleased to offer FREE streaming of the acclaimed documentary "Underfire: The Untold Story of PFC Tony Vaccaro". 

This offer is limited, please contact the Gallery for details.

UNDERFIRE: The Untold Story of Tony Vaccaro (trailer). from Cargo Film & Releasing on Vimeo.

In 1943, with the Allied invasion of Europe imminent, a newly drafted 21-year old Tony Vaccaro applied to the U.S. Army Signal Corps. He had developed a passion for photography and knew he wanted to photograph the war. “They said I was too young to do this,” Tony says, holding his finger as if taking a photo, “but not too young to do this,” turning his finger forward, pulling a gun trigger. Not one to be denied, Tony went out and purchased a $47.00 Argus C3, and carried the camera into the war with him. He would fight with the 83rd Infantry Division for the next 272 days, playing two roles – a combat infantryman on the front lines and a photographer who would take roughly 8,000 photographs of the war.

In the decades that followed the war, Tony would go on to become a renowned commercial photographer for magazines such as Look, Life, and Flair, but it is his collection of war photos, images that capture the rarely seen day-to-day reality of life as a soldier, that is his true legacy. Tony kept these photos locked away for decades in an effort to put the war behind him, and it wasn’t until the mid-1990s that this extraordinary body of work was first discovered and celebrated in Europe. In the United States, however, Tony has yet to receive his due and few people have heard of him.

The film tells the story of how Tony survived the war, fighting the enemy while also documenting his experience at great risk, developing his photos in combat helmets at night and hanging the negatives from tree branches. The film also encompasses a wide range of contemporary issues regarding combat photography such as the ethical challenges of witnessing and recording conflict, the ways in which combat photography helps to define how wars are perceived by the public, and the sheer difficulty of staying alive while taking photos in a war zone.

Though the narrative spine of the film is a physical journey in which Tony brings us to the places in Europe where many of his most powerful photos were taken, over the course of the film we also trace Tony’s emotional journey from a young GI eager to record the war to an elderly man who, at 93, has become a pacifist, increasingly horrified at man’s ability to wage war. Tony believed fiercely that the Allied forces in WWII were engaged in a just war, but he vowed never to take another war photo the day the war ended, and he didn’t.

In addition to numerous interviews with Tony, interviewees include Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalists Tyler Hicks and Lynsey Addario; Anne Wilkes Tucker, a photography curator and curator of the comprehensive exhibition WAR/PHOTOGRAPHY; James Estrin, a Senior Photographer for the New York Times and editor of the Times’ Lens blog; and John G. Morris, who was the photo editor of Life Magazine during World War II and was Robert Capa’s editor.

Tony Vaccaro celebrates his 98th birthday on December 20, 2020.

Ted Landsmark: Unsung Champion for Social Justice in Boston

"The Soiling of Old Glory" - Anti-Busing demonstration, Boston, April 5, 1976
© Stanley Forman


Via NBC 10 Boston

By Ronnie Forchheimer
Published Nov 27, 2018 

"Millions of people have seen the iconic 1976 photograph of Ted Landsmark being attacked by anti-busing protesters on Boston City Hall Plaza, but few know him by name and most are unaware of his life as an educator and proponent of equal rights in Boston and beyond.

While Landsmark concedes he will be forever associated with the Pulitzer Prize-winning photo, he prefers to be recognized for his accomplishments as a community leader in Boston. In an odd twist, being at the center of one of the most significant civil rights photographs in history elevated Landsmark’s profile and gave him the chance to pursue social justice on behalf of many Bostonians."

--click for full article

"On the way to the hospital, I had a few minutes to gather my thoughts to think, ‘something weird has just happened to me and I think it was an anti-busing demonstration and I think somebody just tried to kill me with the American flag’." --Ted Landsmark

Texas Book Festival panel discussion of "Eddie Adams: Bigger than the Frame"

The Briscoe Center invites you to a Texas Book Festival panel discussion of:

"Eddie Adams: Bigger than the Frame"
A Co-publication of the Briscoe Center and the University of Texas Press

Sunday, November 5, 2017
12:00 p.m.–12:45 p.m.

Moderator: Don Carleton
Panelists: Alyssa Adams and Anne Wilkes Tucker
Location: The Contemporary Austin–Jones Center
...
Drawn from the Briscoe Center's Eddie Adams Photographic Archive, "Bigger Than the Frame" presents a career-spanning selection of a renowned photographer's finest work. In addtion to Adams's much-praised Vietnam War photography, the book includes images that uncannily reflect the world and domestic issues of today, including immigration, conflict in the Middle East, and the refugee crisis. They attest to Adams's overwhelming desire to empathize with others and tell their stories–as he once observed, "I actually become the person I am taking a picture of. If you are starving, I am starving, too." Best known for Saigon Execution, his Pulitzer Prize–winning photograph that forever shaped how the world views the horrors of war, Adams won more than five hundred awards, including the George Polk Award for News Photography three times and the Robert Capa Gold Medal.

Books will be available for purchase at the event.

The Jones Center is located at Seventh Street and Congress Avenue. Street and garage parking are available nearby.

Eddie Adams' fine art prints are available from the Monroe Gallery of Photography.

THAT'S ME IN THE PICTURE

Stanley Forman: "The Soiling of Old Glory", 1976

That’s me in the picture: Ted Landsmark is assaulted in Boston, at an ‘anti-bussing’ protest, 5 April 1976 via The Guardian


View this photograph at the AIPAD Photography Show, Monroe gallery of Photography, Booth #119, April 15 - 19 2015

"38 years ago today I won my second Pulitzer. I recently found this clip (I have lots of clips but where they are nobody knows, including me). With the help of my friend Scott Ryder we copied a lot of stuff lately.

It was Marathon Day, April 18, 1977. The Marathon back then began at noon. I raced (by car) back to the finish line at the Prudential Building after covering the start in Hopkinton. The winners would start showing up around 2:10.

The Pulitzers were historically announced the first Monday in May so I had no clue why I was summoned back to the office immediately. It was a very exciting day."  --Stanley Forman

April 5, 1976: "The Soiling of Old Glory"

Stanly Forman: The Soiling of Old Glory

April 5, 1976

Via Today in History


In 1976, during an outdoor demonstration against court-ordered school busing in Boston, a white teenager swung a pole holding an American flag at a black attorney  in a scene captured in a Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph by Stanley Forman of the Boston Herald American.


Monroe Gallery of Photography will be exhibiting this photograph at the AIPAD Photography Show in New York April 16 - 19, 2015, in booth #119.

The photograph depicts a white teenager, Joseph Rakes, about to assault black lawyer and civil-rights activist Ted Landsmark with a flagpole bearing the American flag. It was taken in Boston on April 5, 1976, during a protest against court-ordered desegregation busing. It ran on the front page of the Herald American the next day, and also appeared in several newspapers across the country. It won the 1977 Pulitzer Prize for Spot Photography. "Louis Masur has written an indispensable history about an unforgettable image. With admirable empathy and grace, he reveals why racial conflict in modern America is both so compelling and so difficult to resolve."

Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to place historical marker to honor Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams

Associated Press

Eddie Adams covers action in South Vietnam in 1965

for The Associated Press 

Via The Pittsburgh Post Gazette

By Jon Schmitz / Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

 

Three Western Pennsylvania historical sites were among 22 selected by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission to receive the familiar blue and gold commemorative roadside markers.

Markers will be placed at or near the site of George Westinghouse’s gas wells in Point Breeze, in New Kensington to honor Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Eddie Adams and in Erie to memorialize the iconic “Don’t Give Up the Ship” battle flag from the War of 1812.

Dates for installation and precise locations of the markers are not determined until local interests have raised money to pay for the markers, said Howard Pollman, spokesman for the commission. The cost ranges from $1,400 to $1,875.

“They are usually placed as close as possible to the place where the event took place or the person lived,” he said.

Mr. Westinghouse began to experiment with natural gas extraction in the 1880s, when he also was pioneering electricity generation. He drilled four wells at the site of his Point Breeze estate.

“At the time the fuel was unsafe and dangerous to use,” the commission said. “Over the next few years, Westinghouse patented over 30 inventions for the distribution, safe use and metering of natural gas. His work was instrumental in the expansion and availability of natural gas as an important widespread energy source.”

Mr. Adams is best-known for a photograph, taken in 1968 during the Vietnam War, of a Vietnamese police chief firing a bullet into the head of a Viet Cong prisoner from arm’s length range on a Saigon street. The image appeared worldwide, including on the front page of The New York Times, and galvanized opposition to the war in the U.S.

The Pulitzer Prize he won for the image was one of about 500 photography awards he received during a career that saw him cover 13 wars.

The commission said Mr. Adams got his start as a photographer in his hometown of New Kensington, shooting photographs for his high school yearbook and as a staff photographer for the local newspaper. He died in 2004 and was buried at Greenwood Memorial Park in Lower Burrell.

Seven Erie women created a battle flag in the summer of 1813 for Oliver Hazard Perry to fly on his ship, the Lawrence, in the Battle of Lake Erie.

The slogan was from the last words of Capt. James Lawrence and became a rallying cry for the ship’s crew, which helped to defeat the British in the pivotal battle.

Replica flags with “Don’t Give Up the Ship” are displayed throughout Erie, which held a yearlong celebration of the battle’s bicentennial in 2013.

Mr. Pollman said the marker likely will be placed near the Erie Maritime Museum, home to a full-sized replica of the Brig Niagara, which also took part in the battle.

The commission selected the 22 markers from a pool of 50 applications. Currently, nearly 2,300 historical markers are in place throughout the state.

More information on the Historical Marker Program, including application information, is available online at www.pahistoricalmarkers.com.


Monroe Gallery of Photography will host a major exhibition of Eddie Adams' photographs in Spring, 2016, in conjunction with a new book of Adams' Vietnam photographs by the University of Texas Press .

Jeff Widener, the photographer behind Tiananmen 'tank man' image

June 5, 1989, Tiananmen Square: A day after the military opened fire on protestors, photographer Jeff Widener was setting up the shot for the now iconic "tank man" image: "I was leaning over the balcony aiming at this row of tanks, and the guy walks out with this shopping bag and I was thinking 'the guy is going to ruin my composition.'" The final photo won the Scoop Award in France, the Chia Sardina Award in Italy, and was a finalist for the Pulitzer Prize

The Charlie Rose Show:  Charlie Rose has a conversation with award-winning photojournalist Jeff Widener who took one of the most famous photographs of the 20th century

Time LightBox: Tank Man at 25: Behind the Iconic Tiananmen Square Photo


Bloomberg TV: `Tank Man’ Photographer Remembers Tiananmen Square


Voice of America: Q&A with Jeff Widener: 'Tank Man' Photographer



Jeff Widener is the photographer who took the famous ‘Tank Man’ photograph near Beijing’s Tiananmen Square on June 5, 1989, during a crackdown on pro-democracy students that stunned the world. On the eve of the 25^th anniversary of the photograph, interviews with Weidner are featured in many news outlets, a few are linked below.


CNN: Jeff Widener, the photographer behind Tiananmen 'tank man' image


Widener: 'Tank Man photo changed my life'


The New York Times: 25 Years Later, Details Emerge of Army’s Chaos Before Tiananmen Square


Wall Street Journal: Forgotten Negatives From the ‘Tank Man’ Photographer


South China Daily Post: 'Many have forgotten the brief moment China was free', says Tiananmen 'tank man' photographer


Daily Mail: Tiananmen Square 'Tank Man' photographer shares forgotten negatives from bloody government crackdown on 25th anniversary



"Each year in the run-up to the anniversary of the Tiananmen Square killings, China tries to intimidate journalists into silence. The 25th anniversary seems to have prompted an even broader crackdown," said CPJ Deputy Director Robert Mahoney from New York.

With war photography in the news, wrote Bob Gomel of Life magazine, how about some recognition for Max Desfor of The Associated Press?

Max Desfor  ©Photo Bob Gomel

Via The New York Times Lens Blog
October 28, 2013


It was one celebrated photographer’s salute to another. With war photography in the news, wrote Bob Gomel of Life magazine, how about some recognition for Max Desfor of The Associated Press?

“Max was a great inspiration and mentor,” said Mr. Gomel, 80, of Houston. “He was a sweetheart, a gentle soul.”

Mr. Desfor had won the 1951 Pulitzer Prize for photography with his Korean War pictures, particularly the haunting shot of a bombed bridge crawling with refugees (Slide 1).

In 1958, he had offered Mr. Gomel a coveted job with The A.P’s Wide World Division. Mr. Gomel had turned it down for a career in feature photography. Whereupon Mr. Gomel became perhaps best known for his 1969 Life cover, shot from high above, of President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s coffin ringed with mourners in the Capitol rotunda. He also photographed the Kennedys, the Beatles, Malcolm X, Cassius Clay (later Muhammad Ali), Mickey Mantle and Marilyn Monroe.

“Max is 98,” Mr. Gomel said, and was living in a retirement community in Silver Spring, Md. Full article with slideshow here.

"In a digital world, the pre-eminence of Vietnam-era photography is unlikely ever to be duplicated"

Eddie Adams/©AP Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, Saigon, 1968

 

Via The New York Times:


"Perhaps even more viscerally even than on television, America’s most wrenching war in our time hit home in photographs, including these three searing prize-winning images from The Associated Press newsmen Malcolm W. Browne, Eddie Adams and Nick Ut. They are the subject of retrospectives now, in a new book and accompanying exhibitions.
      

No single news source did more to document the bitter and costly struggle against North Vietnamese Communist regulars and Vietcong insurgents, and to turn the home front against the war, than The A.P."  Full article here.

Jeff Widener shares his experience in documenting a war-torn African nation after entering the country with a humanitarian visa

Via PetaPixel
Jeff Widener · Aug 02, 2013

My Journey to Angola

 

Africa started tugging on me again last year and when an opportunity to join an NGO to Angola surfaced, I quickly seized the opportunity. Non-government agencies like the Red Cross and Amnesty International offer a way for photojournalists to see parts of the world completely closed off to the average traveler. The Chicago based RISE International, a non profit organization that builds schools in Angola allowed me to join them in July to document their work. Full article and photographs here.

Jeff Widener is a Pulitzer Prize-nominated American photojournalist who’s best known for shooting the photo “Tank Man“. He has documented wars and social issues in over 100 countries, and was the first photojournalist to send digital photos from the South Pole. You can read our recent interview with him here.

"Their deaths represent the slipping away of a generation of war reporters that brought the reality of the conflict to the living rooms of America in unprecedented detail and horrifying close-up"

Browne's image of the Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc, who set fire to himself in 1963, was published around the world. Photograph: Malcolm Browne/AP

"Nick, Eddie and Malcolm hold the first three places in the temple of the perfect photo. Nothing really comes close to the drama, the horror and downright importance of those images." David Hume Kennerly remembers Malcolm Browne via The Huffington Post.

Time LightBox: Malcolm Browne: The Story Behind The Burning Monk
The New York Times: Malcolm W. Browne, Pulitzer-Prize Winning Reporter, Dies at 81

The Guardian: Malcolm Browne obituary

Wall Street Journal: Burning-monk photographer Malcolm Browne dies

The Telegraph in Pictures: Malcolm Browne, Horst Fass and Roy Essoyan: the men who documented the Vietnam War  (slide show)

Washington Post: Death of Malcolm Browne represents slipping away of Vietnam War generation reporters
 

EDDIE ADAMS DAY: June 9, 2012

Via National Presss Photographers Association

NEW KENSINGTON, PA  - The Pennsylvania hometown of the great photojournalist Eddie Adams has proclaimed June 9, 2012, to be "Eddie Adams Day." The celebration in New Kensington includes includes a gallery opening, a screening of the documentary "An Unlikely Weapon," and a gala dinner with speaker and Pulitzer Prize winner John Filo.

IT WAS 40 YEARS AGO...Live Facebook chat with Pulitzer Prize Photojounalist Nick Ut Monday at 2 Eastern

In this June 8, 1972 file photo, crying children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, run down Route 1 near Trang Bang, Vietnam after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places as South Vietnamese forces from the 25th Division walk behind them. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped its flaming napalm on South Vietnamese troops and civilians. From left, the children are Phan Thanh Tam, younger brother of Kim Phuc, who lost an eye, Phan Thanh Phouc, youngest brother of Kim Phuc, Kim Phuc, and Kim's cousins Ho Van Bon, and Ho Thi Ting. (AP Photo/Nick Ut)

When photographer Nick Ut snapped the Pulitzer-winning image of Kim Phuc, neither knew what the next 40 years had in store. On Monday, June 4, the AP  will be hosting a live Facebook chat with Nick at 2 p.m. EDT. Start asking your questions now on the AP Facebook page, and Nick may respond during the chat.

Joe McNally: Phan Ti Kim Phuc, 1995



 Joe McNally was the first to photograph Kim Phuc and her baby, for Life magazine

Joe McNally:  "That photo made on that horrible day was made in less than a second. Yet a lifetime spun on its power."

NPR: "Whatever your age, you've probably seen this photo. It's a hard image to forget"
(with audio)


'Napalm Girl' photo from Vietnam War turns 40: David Ono hosts special, 'Witness: Power of a Picture' (video)

The Guardian:  Girl from AP's Vietnam napalm photo finds peace with her role in history

Washington Post Slideshow

Related: It Was Forty Years Ago Today (1968)

May 4, 1970: Kent State

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©John Filo: Mary Vecchio grieving over stain student, Kent State, May 4, 1970

Via Newseum: Today in News History: May 4, 1970: Four students were killed and nine others were wounded at Kent State University by members of the Ohio National Guard. John Paul Filo’s iconic image of the massacre received the 1971 Pulitzer Prize for spot news.


(Click above link for video interview with John Filo.)

Related: Kent State, 40 years on: the shredding of constitutional liberty still goes on

"The Soiling of Old Glory”: The Power of a Photograph




“The Soiling of Old Glory”: The Power of a Photograph Lecture by Louis Masur

Thursday, July 14 7-9pm
Fairfield Museum and History Center, Fairfield, CT
$8; Members and Students, $3
To register in advance, call 203-259-1598.

Join us for Trinity College Professor Louis Masur’s engaging discussion of The Soiling of Old Glory, a 1976 Pulitzer Prize winning photograph by Stanley Forman. Learn how an harrowing image of an angry white teenager brandishing an American flag at an African-American man crystallized complex issues about forced busing.

Taken in April of 1976, the photograph is of Theodore Landsmark, an African American lawyer heading to Boston's city hall for a case. Here he encountered over one hundred and fifty anti-busing youths from South Boston and Charleston protesting the decision to bus in students from Roxbury, an African American suburb. Entering into this, Landsmark was attacked, ironically, with an American flag, in Boston, home of the Revolution, on the 200th anniversary of the United States. The photo won freelance photographer Stanley J. Forman of the Boston Herald American a Pulitzer Prize.


On April 5, 1976, Stanley Forman, age 30, reported to work early, as he always did. A photographer for the Boston Herald American, Forman had a nose for the news. A year before he had raced to a fire in Boston and captured a horrifying moment as a fire escape gave way and a woman and girl plunged to the ground. The photograph was reprinted around the world and led to changes in fire safety codes.

Sitting at the city desk that April morning, Forman asked what was going on and his editor dispatched him to City Hall Plaza where an anti-busing protest was under way. As Forman arrived at the scene, he saw the group coming towards him. He also saw a black man walking across the plaza and sensed there might be trouble. Forman was too close to get a picture with the lenses on his two cameras, so he quickly changed to a 20mm lens. He started shooting, but heard the motor drive failing and he began taking single frames manually. The entire incident lasted ten or fifteen seconds; Forman took some twenty-odd shots, though a few of the negatives ran together. As he returned to the office, he had no idea what he had.

It did not take long to discover that the image of a protester wielding the American flag as a weapon to attack the man identified as Theodore Landsmark, an attorney, was a powerful one. Some editors feared that publishing it might inflame the already volatile racial situation in Boston. But it had happened, it was news, and, in the year of the bicentennial, it captured something profound about patriotism, race, and violence in America. The Boston Herald American ran it on the front page on April 6. The photograph appeared as well in the New York Times, Washington Post, and many other papers around the country.

A week or so after taking the photograph, Forman learned that he had won the Pulitzer Prize for his fire escape picture the year before. As he prepared to submit the flag photograph for Pulitzer consideration a colleague suggested the title “The Soiling of Old Glory.” It is an ideal title for a stunning spot news photograph. In April 1977, Forman learned that he had again won the Pulitzer Prize for his work on that April day. Two years later, he was part of the staff that won the Prize for coverage of the blizzard of 1978. The most accomplished spot news photographer of his era, Forman is now an equally accomplished, award-winning television news photographer.

Louis P. Masur
Trinity College