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.

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.

"There doesn’t seem to be any stopping Jeff Widener on his continued journey in making beautiful, real photographs"

Via Peta Pixel

A chat with Jeff Weidener, the photographer behind 'Tank Man,' a photo that is widely considered one of the iconic images of the 20th century.

JW: Basically it’s a lucky shot from being in the wrong place at the right time. I had been knocked silly the night before from a stray protestor brick that hit me in the face and the Nikon F3 Titanium camera absorbed the blow sparring my life. I was also suffering from a bad case of the flu during the whole Tiananmen story so I was pretty messed up. Our Asia photo editor had been in Beijing for weeks covering Mikhail Gorbachev’s high level meetings with Chinese leaders and was anxious to return to Tokyo but unfortunately the night before the massacre. That left AP Beijing photo editor Mark Avery, New Delhi based AP photographer Liu Heung Shing and myself to cover one of the biggest stories of the 20th century. After sneaking into the Beijing Hotel with the help of an American college student named Kirk Martsen, I managed to get one fairly sharp frame of Tank Man from the 5th floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel with an 800mm focal length lens. I had run out of film and Martsen managed to find a single roll of 100 ASA from a tourist. The problem was it was 100 speed and I usually used 800. This meant that when I was eyeballing the light, I was three stops too low on the Nikon FE2 auto shutter speed. It was a miracle that the picture came out at all. It wasn’t tack sharp but good enough to front almost every newspaper in the world the next day.
I never dreamed the image would turn into a cult thing. I guess the first time I realized I had something was when David Turnley of the Detroit Free Press told me that he thought I would win a Pulitzer for the image. As fate would have it, David won it that year and I was a finalist. It’s funny because I recall being in the middle of a Bangkok slum that year and around the corner came a familiar face. It was Pulitzer Prize winner Stan Grossfeld who I had previously met. His first words were “Widener…you was robbed”.