Juan Fernando Pacheco

World’s Famous Photos: Migrant Mother [1936].

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

From today and during some future posts, I’m writing about some of the most world’s famous photos. Today I want to write about the Migrant Mother [1936].

This photo was take on 1932 when Florence Owens Thompson have 32 years old, and for many this photo means Great Depression. She was the mother of 7 and she struggled to survive with her kids catching birds and picking fruits and the author of the photo was Dorothea Lange who took the picture after Florence sold her tent to buy food for her children

Here you can find a little bit more about the Florence biography:

Florence, born in Oklahoma and of Cherokee Indian descent, married farmer Cleo Owens on St. Valentine’s Day in 1921. In 1922, Florence and Cleo Owens moved to Shafter, California. In 1924, they moved to Porterville, some 50 miles (80 km) north of Shafter, where Cleo and his brothers had found work at a sawmill. But the mill burned down in 1927, so they moved 125 miles (200 km) further north to Merced Falls. There was no “Falls”, but there was a sawmill, a strong river to carry logs down from the hills, and a small town. Merced Falls sat on the eastern side of the California Central Valley in the foothills and consisted of five or six streets, one store and one school. In September 1929, Florence gave birth to the fifth of her seven children, a girl named Ruby. In the same year, the Wall Street stock market crashed.

And the story behind of the photo is a little bit longer:

In 1936, while driving down US Highway 101, the car’s timing chain snapped and they coasted to a stop just inside a camp. Florence set up a camp there, and Jim Hill, a man who was living with Florence, went to get help for their car with two of her sons. As Florence waited for Hill and her boys to come back, Dorothea Lange drove up and started taking photos of Florence and her family. Over 10 minutes she took 6 images.

Lange wrote of the meeting:

“I did not ask her name or her history. She told me her age, that she was 32. She said that they had been living on frozen vegetables from the surrounding fields and birds that the children killed. She had just sold the tires from her car to buy food.”

Her son Troy Owens recounts:

“There’s no way we sold our tires, because we didn’t have any to sell. The only ones we had were on the Hudson and we drove off in them. I don’t believe Dorothea Lange was lying, I just think she had one story mixed up with another. Or she was borrowing to fill in what she didn’t have.”

It was only in the late 1970s that Florence’s identity was made known, after a letter she had written was published in a local newspaper and the Associated Press sent a story around entitled “Woman Fighting Mad Over Famous Depression Photo.” Florence was quoted as saying “I wish she [Lange] hadn’t taken my picture. I can’t get a penny out of it. She didn’t ask my name. She said she wouldn’t sell the pictures. She said she’d send me a copy. She never did.”

World’s Famous Photos: The Unknown Rebel – The Tiananmen Square [1989].

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

From today and during some future posts, I’m writing about some of the most world’s famous photos. Today I want to write about the unknown rebel – The Tiananmen Square [1989].

This photo was taken from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile away, through a 400mm lens. It was subsequently nominated for the 1990 Pulitzer Prize for “Spot News Photography” by Jeff Widener (The Associated Press) on June 5, 1989, during the Tiananmen Square Protests and it was called as “Tank Man” or “The Unknown Rebel” and shows a man probably called “Wang Weilin (王维林)” a 19-year-old student; however, –the veracity of this claim is dubious–.

This man was armed just with a plastic bag in each hand abd he stands in front of a column of Chinese Tanks, this photo just shows five (5) tanks but others shows us more thanks in the same column, in fact at the end of this post you can see a video showing us the tanks came to a stop, he appeared to be trying to wave them away. In response, the front tank attempted to drive around the man, but the man repeatedly stepped into the path of the tank in a show of nonviolent action. After blocking the tanks, the man climbed up onto the top of the lead tank and had a conversation with the driver. Reports of what he said to the driver vary, including “Why are you here? My city is in chaos because of you”, “Go back, turn around, and stop killing my people”; and “Go away.”. Inclusive a British newspaper also claimed that he had been executed, several days after the incident, but these claims have not been confirmed either.

Although the photography tells us a story really important:

In the West, pictures of the Unknown Rebel were presented as a symbol of the Chinese democracy movement; a Chinese youth risking his life to oppose a military juggernaut seemed a fitting representation of students bravely and spontaneously protesting against the authoritarian rule of the CPC. The image resonated within democracies as a symbol of an individual’s power to halt government and force a change in direction.

Anyway, in my personal case this photo shows the power of one, and how it can change the course of the biggest things.

World’s Famous Photos: Stricken child crawling towards a food camp [1994].

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

From today and during some future posts, I’m writing about some of the most world’s famous photos. Today I want to write about stricken child crawling towards a food camp [1994].

This photo was taken by Kevin Carter (September 13, 1960 – July 27, 1994) in March, 1993 during the Sudan Famine, this picture was awarded with a Pulitzer prize on May 23, 1994 at Columbia University’s Low Memorial Library, and it shows a depicts stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometre away.

No one knows anything about the child, even the photographer because after to take the photo he leaves the scene where it was taken, before of that was sold to The New York Times where it appeared for the first time on March 26, 1993.

Carter times later confided to friends that he wished he had intervened and helped the child Journalists at the time were supposedly warned never to touch famine victims for fear of disease. This criticism and the death of a close friend, Ken Oosterbroek, may have contributed to Carter’s tragic suicide. On July 27

He died of carbon monoxide poisoning at the age of 33. The last person to see Carter alive was Oosterbroek’s widow, Monica. Portions of Carter’s suicide note read:

“I am depressed … without phone … money for rent … money for child support … money for debts … money!!! … I am haunted by the vivid memories of killings & corpses & anger & pain … of starving or wounded children, of trigger-happy madmen, often police; of killer executioners…I have gone to join Ken if I am that lucky.”

On August 17, 2006 HBO shows a documentary “The Death of Kevin Carter: Casualty of the Bang Bang Club“

Professional photos of the Lightnings.

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

I’m a photo fan, specially pics about the nature or things like these lightnings, in fact I’m sure this are a very nice professional photos about it.

World’s Famous Photos: Kim Phúc - The napalm girl [1972].

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

From today and during some future posts, I’m write about some of the most world’s famous photos. Today I wants to write about Kim Phúc - The napalm girl [1972].

This photo was taken on June 8, 1972 by the Associated Press Photographer Huynh Cong Út A.K.A  Nick Ut (Born on March 29, 1951), during an escape of the villagers from a village near to Trang Bang, after a napalm bomb was dropped on the village by a plane of the Vietnam Air Force, this occurs during the Vietnam war.

In this Photo we can see the little Kim Phuc, at the age of nine years old, running naked on the road whit her body burns by the napalm, the boy is her older brother who lost an eye after the attacks, after of this Nick Ut took her and some other children to the Hospital in Saigon where several months after they can exit with their bodies recovered from the burns.

This photo was prized with the Pulitzer, but the image by itself got its own story, because the publication of the photo was delayed due to the AP bureaus about show a naked girl.

…an editor at the AP rejected the photo of Kim Phuc running down the road without clothing because it showed frontal nudity. Pictures of nudes of all ages and sexes, and especially frontal views were an absolute no-no at the Associated Press in 1972…Horst argued by telex with the New York head-office that an exception must be made, with the compromise that no close-up of the girl Kim Phuc alone would be transmitted. The New York photo editor, Hal Buell, agreed that the news value of the photograph overrode any reservations about nudity.

Today Nick Ut and Kim Phuc, still in contact, she’s living in Canada and collaborates for the UNESCO.

Only in….

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

This is a great photo gallery of seven pics about various countries and the people living in there.

My favourite is China

20 questions about the net.

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

Scot Finnie, answer these twenty (20) really basic questions about how the net works, and after read it I’m sure this is the very simple way to response this questions.

1. What is the Internet?
2. How does the Net work?
3. What is the Web?
4. How does the Web work?
5. Who started the Net?
6. Who controls the Net?
7. How are online services different from the Web?
8. Why is the Web so slow?
9. Is the Net safe?
10. What is a search engine?
11. What are Java and ActiveX?
12. What’s an intranet?
13. How does email work?
14. What are newsgroups?
15. What’s all the fuss about “push”?
16. How do I make a Web page?
17. How do I talk to people on the Net?
18. How else can I use the Net?
19. Will the Web become more like TV?
20. How can I learn more?

So, if you get one or all of these questions, you can found here the solution to this.

This original article was published by CNET on August 8, 1997

Apple TV Ads.

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

As some of my friends to knows I’m a Mac user and MacAddict from several years ago, that the reason why when I found this website I remember a lot of things from my younger years.

At this web site I found a little collection of Apple Tv Ads, in fact I’m sure about you must saw some of them in the past specially the very famous Think Different where appears images from Einstein, Ghandi, Amelia Earhart, Martin Luther King, etc.

Think different is one of the most influential Apple Ads, it was made in 1998 and you can download to your machine from here.

ATARI candle holder

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

Ok, I accept it, I’m proudly geek.

If my wife wants give me a real romantic dinner these must be the official candle holders.

(here you can find more info)

MARVEL and their ideas.

Posted by Juan Fernando Pacheco

Of course this kind of things just happens in a “comic world” or in a “world of comics” as you likes, but the new great idea of the MARVEL guys was celebrate the success of the Mary Jane Parker (Peter Parker’s wife) with a statuette at the cost of $ 124.99 USD.

But one of the best definitions of the statuette I was read in Boing-Boing:

The statuette features a busty Mary Jane leaning over a bucket and washing Spiderman’s costume. Don’t miss the thong, ripped jeans, pearl necklace, and bare feet

And thats the reason why the controversial “comiquette” gets a lot of dozens of responses from comicbloggers around the world, talking about sexist to the infamous Mary Jane Parker statuette.

« Previous Entries