Photos that horrify - the best ones?

[steelneck]

The Cartier Bresson snapshot of the soldier that just got hit by a bullet. That vietnamese girl, burnt by napalm running naked against the photographer. And of course that picture when the vietnamese police officer executes a man, when the bullet just have started to spread his brains out. Horrible, but these are also pictures that made some change through sheer impact. There are also a number of pictures from the nazi concentration camps.

It is so sad that i have to mention a more positive picture that was just as political and moved people around the world, the chinese man standing in front of the tank at tiananmen square. Talk about curage!

[MattKing]

A photo that is both beautiful and horrifies: W. Eugene Smith's "Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath"

http://www.masters-of-photography.co..._minamata.html

[eddym]

I have lived through two major hurricanes here in Puerto Rico. After the first, Hugo in 1989, I was in shock at all the devastation around me. I could not take any pictures for several months after it hit us. It was as if our entire environment had been destroyed.
Hurricane Georges hit us in 1989, and the devastation was equal to Hugo in our area, but more widespread throughout the island. This time I felt differently; I used photography as therapy. I actually went out shooting the damage in large format, trying to find any beauty that might remain after nature's rampage. Here is one that inspired me: a tree fern -for me, a sort of symbol of the tropical rain forest in which I live, and which was so devastated- that, in spite of having been ravaged, was already recovering, sending out a new frond.

[holmburgers]

This one's a classic. The back story is interesting as well; the photographer took the picture (multiple exposures mind you) with a camera strapped to his ankle.

http://www.justiceblind.com/death/ruth_snyder.jpg

[IloveTLRs]

I remember seeing a series of photos from a garment factory fire in Chicago? in the early 20th century. Young women in mid-air, plunging to their deaths ... that did it for me. I'm not going to try and find the images and relive the experience.

Hats off to the people who can photograph that - I'll stick to landscapes, thank you.

[Lorenzo_from_Venice]

I agree "in toto" with MattKing.
I'm not likely to be horrified by death's pictures. They are of dead people. Death surrounds us and if you Believe, there is another (maybe better) life, if you don't it's just ... the end.

But THOSE pictures, are about a living person, you really can feel the "grotesque" of that poor deformed (in the body and possibly in the mind) creature, being held by the mother. The "horror" imho comes from the ability of Eugene Smith to make you see that creature as her mother see her. While my emotions tells me about the love of a mother for her unfortunate daughter, my rational part still cries for the un-naturality of the scene. It's very destabilizing to me!

[archer]

Dear Steelneck;
The photo of the soldier being struck by the bullet as the picture is being taken was not taken by Bresson but by Robert Capa during the Spanish civil war if I remember correctly, but I too, wonder how any photographer can retain their sanity after recording such slaughter.
Denise Libby