The Photo is the Essay and shows that the power of a photo is timeless! →

On the morning of June 5, 1989, photographer Jeff Widener was perched on a sixth-floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel. The day after the Tiananmen Square massacre, Chinese troops attacked pro-democracy demonstrators camped on the plaza, and the Associated Press sent Widener to document the aftermath.

Widener assumed the man would be killed, but the tanks held their fire. Eventually, the man has whisked away, but not before Widener immortalized his singular act of resistance. Others also captured the scene, but Widener’s image was transmitted over the AP wire and appeared on front pages worldwide. Decades after Tank Man became a global hero; he remains unidentified. The anonymity makes the photograph all the more universal, symbolizing resistance to unjust regimes everywhere.