The Stories Behind The Tank Man of Tiananmen's Photographs in 1989
Twenty-five years ago, the
Tank Man,
the nickname of an anonymous man who stood in front of a column of
tanks on June 5, 1989, the morning after the Chinese military had
suppressed the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 by force. The man
achieved widespread international recognition due to the videotape and
photographs taken of the incident. Some have identified the man as Wang
Weilin (王維林), but the name has not been confirmed and little is known
about him or of his fate after the confrontation that day.
Five
photographers managed to capture the event on film and get their
pictures published in its aftermath. On June 4, 2009, another
photographer released an image of the scene taken from ground level.
Today, images of what happened at Tiananmen Square are
still blocked on the Internet in China
due to what John Palfrey of Harvard’s Berkman Center for Internet and
Society has described as “the world's most sophisticated means of
Internet filtering.”
The most used photograph of the event was
taken by Jeff Widener of the Associated Press, from a sixth floor
balcony of the Beijing Hotel, about half a mile (800 meters) away from
the scene. Widener was injured and suffering from flu. The image was
taken using a Nikon FE2 camera through a Nikkor 400mm 5.6 ED IF lens and
TC-301 teleconverter. Low on film, a friend hastily obtained a roll of
Fuji 100 ASA color negative film, allowing him to make the shot. Though
he was concerned that his shots were not good, his image was syndicated
to a large number of newspapers around the world, and was said to have
appeared on the front page of all European papers.
 |
| Photo: Jeff Widener/Associated Press |
Another
version was taken by Stuart Franklin of Magnum Photos from the fifth
floor of the Beijing Hotel. His has a wider field of view than
Widener's, showing more tanks farther away. He was on the same balcony
as Charlie Cole, and his roll of film was smuggled out of the country by
a French student, concealed in a box of tea.
 |
| Photo: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos |
Charlie Cole, working for
Newsweek
and on the same balcony as Stuart Franklin, hid his roll of film
containing Tank Man in a Beijing Hotel toilet, sacrificing an unused
roll of film and undeveloped images of wounded protesters after the PSB
raided his room, destroyed the two rolls of film just mentioned and
forced him to sign a confession. Cole was able to retrieve the roll and
have it sent to Newsweek. He won a World Press Award for a similar
photo. It was featured in
Life's "100 Photographs That Changed the World" in 2003.
 |
| Photo: Charlie Cole/Newsweek |
On
June 4, 2009, in connection with the 20th anniversary of the protests,
Associated Press reporter Terril Jones revealed a photo he took showing
the Tank Man from ground level, a different angle than all of the other
known photos of the Tank Man. Jones has written that he was not aware of
what he had captured until a month later when printing his photos.
 |
| Photo: Terril JonesAssociated Press |
Arthur
Tsang Hin Wah of Reuters took several shots from room 1111 of the
Beijing Hotel, but only the shot of Tank Man climbing the tank was
chosen. It was not until several hours later that the photo of the man
standing in front of the tank was finally chosen. When the staff noticed
Widener's work, they re-checked Wah's negative to see if it was of the
same moment as Widener's. Later, on March 20, 2013, in an interview by
the Hong Kong Press Photographers Association (HKPPA), Wah told the
story and added further detail. He told HKPPA that on the night of June
3, 1989, he was beaten by students while taking photos and was bleeding.
A "foreign" photographer accompanying him suddenly said "I am not gonna
die for your country" and left. Wah returned to the hotel. When he
decided to go out again, the public security stopped him, so he stayed
in his room, stood next to the window and eventually witnessed the Tank
Man and took several shots on June 4, 1989.
 |
| Photo: Arthur Tsang Hin Wah/Reuters |
