Photographer of Influence

Photographer of Influence

By: Cameron Wright

This picture was taken on June 5, 1989, Jeff Widener was located at the Beijing Hotel on the sixth floor. It was exactly one day after the Tiananmen Square massacre where democracy protestors protested on the plaza and were massacred by the Chinese government. Jeff Widener was sent to take pictures of the aftermath of the massacre. As he was taking pictures of the poor bloodied victims, scorched busses, and bicyclists, a column of tanks rolled out of the plaza. Suddenly, a man holding shopping bags stepped in front of the tanks waving his bags around and not willing to move. The tanks attempted to go around the man, but he kept walking in front of the tanks, briefly climbing on top of one of the tanks. Jeff thought that the man would get killed, but the tanks would not fire. The man was quickly whisked away but he became a global hero, a symbol of resistance to regimes all of the world.

Jeff Widener stated that one day he hopes that the Chinese government would admit their wrongdoings, but instead the Chinese government still denies that anything happened to this day. This picture is of the Chinese military in a truck heading out to stop the protesters.

This photo set a record for the highest-priced contemporary photograph ever, which is ironic because it is a photograph of cheap goods. It is a large scale image that was digitally made by combining multiple images taken in a 99 cent store in Los Angeles. It was meant to look more like an abstract painting than a photograph, which was the photographer Andreas Gursky's point. The photographer uses his sense of composition and digital manipulation to turn normal, everyday experiences into art. The picture is in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. In 2006, the photograph sold for 2.3 million dollars. This was the record for the most expensive contemporary photograph at the time, as the record has been beaten.

This picture is in an Amazon warehouse. The picture encapsulates an uncommon moment of calm in the giant warehouse, without the worker who normally fills the space. The image is rows, after rows, after rows of products randomly placed there. Gursky shows the massive distribution system created from algorithms, with such complicated patterns that it looks random.