"40 of the most powerful pictures ever taken"

[Victor Biro]

http://www.buzzfeed.com/expresident/most-powerful-photographs-ever-taken

Richard Lam's kiss made #15

[Moe Doiron]

Nice to see Richard's photo but that list is hardly credible. Don't believe everything you read on the interweb.

[Victor Biro]

Nice to see Richard's photo but that list is hardly credible. Don't believe everything you read on the interweb.

Moe,

I agree, and like any of these lists it is only one person, or group's, opinion. However, it is nice to have the recognition.

Victor

[Ken Gigliotti]

 Embracing chaos  and the WW2 POW  might be a good place to try to understand the  collection. This group of photos seems to be a collection of the greatest hits of protest and liberation  with a European  leaning .  My first impression , it was like an ink blot  test,someone trying to measure something. The wire service transmissions are old , the WW2  photo is an unusual choice and there are no Civil rights photos from the US in the 1960's .
   One measure of a photo is the desire to have photographed it. The first impression impact is also a good measure. This picture is so unusual I would have to think most photographers in the world would have like  taken it.
  The Kiss , the most powerful and coolest , you bet one hundred percent  -this is a nextGen icon, like young John Kennedy Jr to the Baby boomer Gen. , this picture  requires no waiting , you will see this   unusual image forever.  It is about how people  like to feel about  their time. Absolutely fascinating , 100%  visual  , I don't care about the words .Ckout a 1945 The Kiss  by Alfred Eisenstaedt , deep meaning , or just a kiss . It was the right kiss at the right time . 100% visual
 

[Louie Palu]

There are many great photographs in this set. However, it's pretty disappointing to see this link on our site where we should know our history and what the "40 most powerful photos ever taken" could or should be.

Buzzfeed...?

[Ken Gigliotti]

You have to believe in something. I do not know the bias of the website , and the photographers who took the pictures didn't either .When I look at the pictures and read the small words beside them  , I see the moments before and the moment after.These are powerful pictures to many nationalities  in very different times .Very hard times . There is strength when most would feel weakness. Just give credit where it is due. 
powerful – part of the definition states  , possessing great force or energy , strong ,having great effect on the mind.
  The  collection preamble calls it a collection that demonstrates , heartbreak  of loss , tremendous  power of loyalty . The triumph of the human spirit .#1- loss of a sister , #2 Russian war vet weeps beside a tank he defended his country in , now  war memorial . The Russian defence of their country during WW2 ranks with  all the  great battles going back to the time of the Greeks .#3 Romanian child give heart shaped balloon to riot police ,very unique #4 Retired police captain in uniform being arrested at an Occupy demo , very unique ,#5 a monk in China prays over the body of a stranger who died suddenly in a train station.Random and touching  #6 dog sits by the grave of its owner for the second day at the site of a mass grave for landslide victims. It has to be one of the  saddest pictures ever .#7 Black Power salute at Mexico Olympic  games very powerful and courageous  at the time and the world did not cheer .#6  Prisoners , women and children  destined  for a Nazi death camp, liberated  ,just have to look at the photo , lost in time  as it is wire photo transmission. It brings tears, child in background looks like a skeleton , a very happy skeleton. Context  ! .Tears and embraces over and over again .#21 a propaganda  picture with the tables turned ,POW and Himmler , POW standing at attention while everyone else is sitting , his look , his story , he escaped and returned to the camp 200 times to see a girl he fell in love with. Facing death if caught even once . Just ask the other POW's about being powerful.Big brass balls of power.
 This is an international collection so many North American icons may be missing , it is a world view. Not enough photographers  are recognized , is very disturbing , to me. I would be more  angry about  that , than any literal  connotations attached the the photos themselves .The photographers just did their job , there names are gone .But these are great pictures . Thinking visually , it is pretty good .Any photographer would be proud to have taken any one of them.  What is power ?, we give power , we take power  .kg

[Andy Clark]

Typical collection of images picked by a group of people who haven't spent alot of time looking back. There are plenty of very famous powerful images missing, though I agree there are a few in the collection too....but it lacks terribly, such as Stanley Foreman's collapsing fire escape in 1975, The image of the monk on fire in a Saigon street in 62 or 63...or course Eddie Adams Saigon execution, The right wing student killing the Political Party leader in Tokyo with a bayonet 1960 or 61...or the 3-Queens image from funeral of King George VI 1952, Just those that come to my mind at this moment could easily replace several in this collection......

Yes of course different groups would pick different images and others would say well you missed that or this, its all subjective as we know....but......over half the images in this collection were taken in the last 10 years. Still "news" photography has been around since the Crimean War 1853-56...and "23" of the most powerful images ever taken were in the last 10 years???....com'on kiddies get the flip off the internet and go to a library, do some research instead of google search!!!!!

[Ken Gigliotti]

40 Powerful , much less than  one picture per decade. There are easily 40 pictures from Viet Nam alone , or the American Civil Rights  movement , the 60's . Rock and Roll has easily 40 pictures. Just picking 40 American pictures has it's pitfalls . Right from the start , futility. The thought process was more intriguing . Someone chose these pictures. Headlines usually reflect the sloppiness of any media.Every media has an audience or readership. What does this collection mean to this website's readers? Which years are more meaningful ? The qualifying words from the collector are a better indicator.
  Is this young vs old , is there anything here that could be seen as a trend? My first impression , because of the unusual choices  ,was someone  trying to measure something.
 
 The most powerful “news” pictures have that immediacy , crystallization , and also the element of capturing a high action moments . Many are flash point moments. The skill of the photographer , an “oh wow moment” a screaming face “ . The power of the “instant”  , the fast lens the fast film , the fast reflex. These pictures speak for their time , they are  “sport shooter” sharp point  anomalies . One picture stands for its time.
  Award winning  .These are our skills. This is our criteria.
  There are other photos , millions of photos . The variety and quality of pictures posted every day is staggering. The pictures in this collection are noticeably quiet , different. When you look into them , there is more of that “different” quality.  The viewer can be more involved in the details of  the foreground and background .
   Some will focus on the weakest pictures others the strongest.
   Great , greatest , powerful , most powerful , opinions . On the internet everyone gets to speak. The collection was qualified , my interest is to try to understand the thought process behind it . Someone had access to some very old newspaper archives . These archives are  likely  auctioned off , or tossed out like that last lot ( glass negs ,zinc plates tossed out on mass when newspapers moved into offset plants ). Some of these wire photo transmissions are ending up in flea markets.
  Photographers names are missing from historic pictures in every media . The people who were there , replaced by ... It took so  long to get properly credited in the smallest type possible. Picture history bought up like music collections , names become addresses .
  I was not offended by the headline ,  seldom fooled by headlines. The Crimean War was 150 years, WW1 is 104 years , ago , this collection goes back about 70 years. 1930's could  have a dust bowl picture from  famous US ,Great Depression collection  , or the rise of Nazism in Germany , famine in Ukraine .