An experimental – and controversial – procedure for treating a crippling birth defect in the womb offered Trish and Mike Switzer the only chance that their daughter would walk like other children. But the fetal surgery posed a fatal dilemma: Their baby could die before she was born.

Photographer Max Aguilera saiud about this photo: “During a spina bifida corrective procedure at twenty-one weeks in utero, Samuel thrusts his tiny hand out of the surgical opening of his mother’s uterus. As the doctor lifts his hand, Samuel reacts to the touch and squeezes the doctor’s finger. As if testing for strength, the doctor shakes the tiny fist. Samuel held firm. At that moment, I took this “Fetal Hand Grasp” photo.

As a photojournalist, my job is to tell stories through pictures. The experience of taking this photograph has had a profound effect on me, and I’m proud to share this moment with you”

I’m not really sure about this but from what i remember, after this picture abortions were banned in UK. Please correct me if i’m wrong.

Photographer: Max Aguilera-Hellweg
Source: outofrange.net

The girl in the picture is Phan Thị Kim Phúc also known as Kim Phuc (born in 1963), a nine-year old running naked and severely burned on her back by a napalm atack.

Photographer Huynh Cong Ut, known by his colleagues as Nick, was working there as a photo journalist for Associated Press at the time and took a number of photographs of the villagers trying to escape the napalm. This one, epitomising the savagery and tragedy of the conflict, won him the coveted Pulitzer Prize and became one of the most published photos of the Vietnam war.

The boy is her older brother Tam who survived the attack but lost an eye. Ut (the photographer) poured water onto the young girl and took her and some of the other children to a hospital near Saigon where she spent fourteen months recovering from the horrific burns to her skin.

Later, the girl studied medicine and now she; a UNESCO member living in Canada.

Photographer: Huynh Cong Ut (Associated Press)
Source: wikipedia.org

The photo is the “Pulitzer Prize” winning photo taken in 1994 during the Sudan Famine.
The picture depicts stricken child crawling towards an United Nations food camp, located a kilometer away.

The vulture is waiting for the child to die so that it can eat him. This picture shocked the whole world. No one knows what happened to the child, including the photographer Kevin Carter who
left the place as soon as the photograph was taken.

Three months later he committed suicide due to depression.

Photographer: Kevin Carter
Source: Wikipedia.org

It is said this picture killed an industry. On May 6, 1937, the Hindenburg dirigible exploded killing 35 of the 97 people aboard. The incident killed the zeppelin travel industry, which was, at the time, considered the safest mode of air travel available. The funny thing is that it wasn’t the worst zeppelin accident but the only one cought on a picture…

Photographer: Murray Becker
Source: wikipedia.org

Omayra Sánchez was one of the 25,000 victims of the Nevado del Ruiz (Colombia) volcano which erupted on November 14, 1985. The 13-year old had been trapped in water and concrete for 3 days. The picture was taken shortly before she died and it caused controversy due to the photographer’s work and the Colombian government’s inaction in the midst of the tragedy, when it was published worldwide after the young girl’s death.

Photographer: Frank Fournier
Source: wikipedia.org

Bonus video: