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Photos

Why are photographs powerful sources? Contextualize, one does not need to be literate to understand an image. Because photographs seemed more “factual,” they served to “authenticate” a message. Until the development of more modern technologies to change photographs easily, people tended to trust photographs more than other images, such as posters. Consider the picture of the uprising in E. Germany in 1953. Soviet tanks crushed the workers’ uprising against the communist government. One sees two men throwing rocks at a Soviet tank. The image however conveys more. Such a picture is powerful. It shows two people fighting against a tank, hopeless maybe, but their courage comes through as they seek to stop the spread of the evil of communism much like American soldiers are doing globally. Therefore, while a photograph offers a “factual image,” a photograph is not neutral. It can convey powerful emotions and meanings.
 

 

NEGOTIATIONS

SIGNING SALT

SIGNING THE TRUMAN DOCTRINE

 

VLADIVOSTOK

YURI

SIGNING THE NATO PROCLAMATION

 

YURI GAGARIN

VALENTINA TERESHKOVA

LETTER ABOUT THE BOMB

 

WHITE HOUSE MEETING

IRON CURTAIN SPEECH

POTSDAM CONFERENCE

 

TRUMAN DOCTRINE SPEECH

Marilyn Monroe singing in front of troops in Korea.

MARILYN MONROE

War weary Korean girl with brother on her back in front of a tank. 1951.

WAR WEARY KOREAN GIRL

 

In this undated photo from North Korea’s official Korean Central News Agency, American combatants captured during the Korean War march down a street.

CAPTURED AMERICAN TROOPS

Singer Paul Robeson addresses a “Hands Off Korea” rally from a sound truck at the corner of 126th Street and Lenox Avenue in the Harlem section of New York, on July 3, 1950.

“HANDS OFF KOREA” RALLY

A U.S. Marine tank follows a line of prisoners of war down a village street. September 26, 1950.

U.S. TANK AND PRISONERS OF WAR

 

Captured by American forces in the Taegu area of South Korea on October 8, 1950, these North Korean girls are marched to a train which will take them to a prisoner of war camp at Pusan.

CAPTURED NORTH KOREAN GIRLS

A mobile army surgical hospital somewhere in Korea on October 26, 1951. The patient in the left foreground is receiving blood plasma, while behind him two operations are taking place, one at left and one in the center. Photographer Healy took the photos as he found them. Everyone was so busy that no one had time to pose.

MOBILE ARMY SURGICAL HOSPITAL

A command post somewhere in South Korea on July 12, 1950, as American soldiers keep on the alert with their straw covered camouflaged weapons carrier.

CAMOUFLAGED WEAPONS CARRIER

 

Soldiers digging into bunkers atop Old Baldy in Korea in 1952.

SOLDIERS DIGGING

South Korean WACs trained and ready to join their men in the battle against Chinese invaders, display military precision as they parade through Pusan, main United Nations’ fort city in Korea, on September 12, 1950.

SOUTH KOREAN WACS TRAINING

All Sgt. Bernard Young lacks is a private secretary to complete his “office” setting, on May 3, 1951. The Detroit, Michigan, military policeman takes his ease in almost deserted Chunchon, South Korea after the bulk of UN forces had withdrawn southward. Only an infantry rear guard unit remained between him and the advancing Communists.

SGT. BERNARD YOUNG IN HIS “OFFICE”

 

Paratroopers drop from U.S. Air Force C-119 transport planes during an operation over an undisclosed location in Korea, in October of 1950.

PARATROOPERS

Three happy fliers of the 18th Fighter Bomber wing let the world know how they feels as they returned from a combat mission over North Korea to learn of the armistice signing on July 29, 1953. Left to right are: 2nd Lt. John Putty, Dallas, Tex.; 1st Lt. James A. Boucek, Ottawa, Kansas,: and 1st Lt. Richard D. Westcott, Houston, Tex., waving from the back seat of the jeep.

HAPPY FLIERS

South Korean women weep as they listen to President Syngman Rhee speak at a memorial service in Seoul, October 17, 1953. The service honored the 33,964 South Koreans killed in the last year of the war.

MEMORIAL SERVICE IN SEOUL, 1953

 

PFC Donald Jones of Topeka, Kansas, pauses to read a sign just posted on the south limit of the demilitarized zone in Korea on July 30, 1953.

DEMILITARIZED ZONE

Conrad Schumann was immortalized in this photograph as he leapt across the barricade that would become the Berlin Wall. The photo was called “The Leap into Freedom”. It became an iconic image of the Cold War.

THE LEAP INTO FREEDOM

East German soldier helps a little boy sneak across the Berlin Wall, August 13, 1961.

SOLDIER HELPS LITTLE BOY

 
 
West Berlin citizens hold a vigil atop the Berlin Wall in front of the Brandenburg Gate on November 10, 1989, the day after the East German government opened the border between East and West Berlin.

VIGIL ATOP THE BERLIN WALL

East German VOPO, a quasi-military border policeman using binoculars, standing guard on one of the bridges linking East and West Berlin, in 1961.

EAST GERMAN VOPO WITH BINOCULARS

A woman and child walk beside a section of the Berlin Wall.

WOMAN WITH CHILD

 
 
Reverend Martin Luther King, American civil rights leader, invited to Berlin by West Berlin Mayor Willy Brandt, visits the wall on September 13, 1964, at the border Potsdamer Platz in West Berlin.

MARTIN LUTHER KING

Two East Berliners jump across border barriers on the Eastern side of border checkpoint at Chaussee Street in Berlin in April of 1989. They were stopped by gun wielding East German border guards and arrested while trying to escape into West Berlin. People in the foreground, still in East Berlin, wait for permits to visit the West.

A JUMP ACROSS THE BORDER

An East Berlin border guard, cigarette in mouth, points his pistol to the scene where two East Germans were led away after failing to escape to the west at Berlin border crossing Chausseestrasse. Eyewitnesses reported the guard also fired shots.

EAST GERMAN GUARD

 
 
A man hammers away at the Berlin Wall on November 12, 1989 as the border barrier between East and West Germany was torn down.

THE WALL IS TORN DOWN

West Berliners crowd in front of the Berlin Wall early November 11, 1989 as they watch East German border guards demolishing a section of the wall in order to open a new crossing point between East and West Berlin, near the Potsdamer Square.

THE WALL FALLS

East and West German Police try to contain the crowd of East Berliners flowing through the recent opening made in the Berlin wall at Potsdamer Square, on November 12, 1989.

EAST AND WEST GERMAN POLICE

 
 

Flag-draped coffins of eight American Servicemen killed in attacks on U.S. military installations in South Vietnam, on February 7, are placed in transport plane at Saigon, February 9, 1965, for return flight to the United States. Funeral services were held at the Saigon Airport with U.S. Ambassador Maxwell D. Taylor and Vietnamese officials attending.

COFFIN

Four “Ranch Hand” C-123 aircraft spray liquid defoliant on a suspected Viet Cong position in South Vietnam in September of 1965. The four specially equipped planes covered a 1,000-foot-wide swath in each pass over the dense vegetation.

PLANES

In Berkeley-Oakland City, California, demonstrators march against the war in Vietnam in December of 1965.

DEMONSTRATORS

 
 

A GI gets a closeup photo as President Nixon meets with troops of the 1st Infantry Division at Di An, 12 miles northeast of Saigon, on his eighth visit to South Vietnam and his first as president, on July 30, 1969.

NIXON

A beheaded statue of an American soldier stands next to a bombed-out theater near the district town of Cu Chi, northwest of Saigon, on December 13, 1972. The statue was placed by troops of the U.S. 25th Infantry Division before they were withdrawn from Vietnam two years earlier. Its head was lost in the explosion that destroyed the theater in background.

BEHEADED STATUE

The Ohio National Guard moves in on rioting students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, on May 4, 1970. Four persons were killed and eleven wounded when National Guardsmen opened fire.

KENT STATE

 
 

Fourteen-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio screams over the body of 20-year-old Kent State student Jeffrey Miller after he was shot by the Ohio National Guard during a protest against the U.S. invasion of Cambodia during the Vietnam War on May 4, 1970.

DEAD STUDENT

A map of Cuba annotated by former U.S. President John F. Kennedy, displayed for the first time at the John F. Kennedy Library in Boston, Massachusetts, on July 13, 2005. Former President Kennedy wrote “Missile Sites” on the map and marked them with an X when he was first briefed by the CIA on the Cuban Missile Crisis on October 16, 1962.

MAP OF CUBA

U.S. President John F. Kennedy speaks before reporters during a televised speech to the nation about the strategic blockade of Cuba, and his warning to the Soviet Union about missile sanctions, during the Cuban missile crisis, on October 24, 1962 in Washington, DC.

PRESIDENT KENNEDY

 
 

Evidence presented by the U.S. Department of Defense, of Soviet missiles in Cuba. This low level photo, made October 23, 1962, of the medium range ballistic missile site under construction at Cuba’s San Cristobal area. A line of oxidizer trailers is at center. Added since October 14, the site was earlier photographed, are fuel trailers, a missile shelter tent, and equipment. The missile erector now lies under canvas cover. Evident also are extensive vehicle tracks and the construction of cable lines to control areas.

EVIDENCE OF MISSILES

U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, Adlai Stevenson, second from right, confronts Soviet delegate Valerian Zorin, first on left, with a display of reconnaissance photographs during emergency session of the U.N. Security Council at the United Nations headquarters in New York, on October 25, 1962.

UNITED NATIONS

A composite image of three photograph taken on October 23, 1962, during a United Nations Security Council meeting on the Cuban Missile Crisis. From left, Soviet foreign deputy minister Valerian A. Zorin; Cuba’s Permanent Representative to the United Nations, Mario Garcia-Inchaustegui; and U.S. Ambassador Adlai Stevenson.

DELEGATES

 
 
Cuban President Fidel Castro replies to President Kennedy’s naval blockade via Cuban radio and television, on October 23, 1962.

FIDEL CASTRO

Members of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) march during a protest against the U.S. action over the Cuban missile crisis, on October 28, 1962 in London, England.

“HANDS OFF CUBA”

Picketers representing an organization known as Women Strike for Peace carry placards outside the United Nations headquarters in New York City, where the U.N. Security Council considers the Cuban missile crisis in a special meeting, on October 23, 1962.

WOMEN STRIKE FOR PEACE

 
 

A Soviet submarine near the Cuban coast controlling the operations of withdrawal of the Russian Missiles from Cuba in accordance with the US-Soviet agreement, on November 10, 1962. American planes and helicopters flew at a low level to keep close check on the dismantling and loading operations, while US warships watched over Soviet freighters carrying missiles back to Soviet Union.

SOVIET SUBMARINE

U.S. Army anti-aircraft rockets, mounted on launchers and pointed out over the Florida Straits in Key West, Florida, on October 27, 1962.

ANTI-AIRCRAFT ROCKETS

This website was produced by the Center for Slavic, Eurasian and East European Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

This project is sponsored in part by the Library of Congress Teaching with Primary Sources Eastern Region Program, coordinated by Waynesburg University.

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