Thomas E. Franklin (born 1966) is an American photographer for The Bergen Record, best known for his photograph Raising the Flag at Ground Zero, which depicts firefighters raising the American flag at the World Trade Center after the September 11, 2001 attacks.

The flag-rasing photo was made shortly after 5 p.m on September 11, 2001. He was standing under a pedestrian walkway across the West Side Highway, which connected the World Trade Center to the World Financial Center at the northwest corner. Franklin said the firefighters were about 150 feet away from him and about 20 feet (6 meters) off the ground, while the debris was about 90 feet beyond that.

Photographer: Thomas E. Franklin
Source: wikipedia.org

Lunch atop a Skyscraper (New York Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam) is a famous photograph taken by Charles C. Ebbets during construction of the GE Building at Rockefeller Center in 1932.

The photograph depicts 11 men eating lunch, seated on a girder with their feet dangling hundreds of feet above the New York City streets. Ebbets took the photo on September 29, 1932, and it appeared in the New York Herald Tribune in its Sunday photo supplement on October 2. Taken on the 69th floor of the GE Building during the last several months of construction, the photo Resting on a Girder shows the same workers napping on the beam.

Photographer: Charles C. Ebbets
Source: allposters.com

This is the iconic image of Space Shuttle Challenger’s smoke plume after its breakup 73 seconds after launch. The accident caused the deaths of all seven crew members of the mission.

On January 28, 1986, the Space Shuttle Challenger and her seven-member crew were lost when a ruptured O-ring in the right Solid Rocket Booster caused an explosion soon after launch. This photograph, taken a few seconds after the accident, shows the Space Shuttle Main Engines and Solid Rocket Booster exhaust plumes entwined around a ball of gas from the External Tank. Because shuttle launches had become almost routine after twenty-four successful missions, those watching the shuttle launch in person and on television found the sight of the explosion especially shocking and difficult to believe until NASA confirmed the accident.

Photographer: NASA Tracking Camera
Source: wikipedia.org

Picture of Tommie Smith on the gold medal platform, John Carlos on the bronze raising their fists in salute at 1968 Mexico City Olympics. For many, Tommie Smith’s and John Carlos’s protest was their first introduction to “Black Power” and the clenched fist, raised arm Black Power salute. Media editors denounced them as unpatriotic, and un-American yet Smith thought that was the point saying, “If I win I am an American, not a black American. But if I did something bad then they would say ‘a Negro’. We are black and we are proud of being black.”

Smith and Carlos each wore a black glove on opposite hands, and Smith’s raised right fist represented Black Power, while Carlos raised left fist represented Black Unity. Together, the raised black, gloved fists formed an arch of Unity and Power. Along with the gloves, the men wore black socks with no shoes to protest black poverty.

Having such an elaborate statement many people assumed that Carlos and Smith were close, yet they barely talked before and after the protest. They only worked out their statement during the two-hour wait for the medal ceremony.

Photographer: unknown
Source: wikipedia.org

This is one of the most famous photos of french photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson, who pioneered the art of street photography. He said of this picture: There was a plank fence around some repairs behind the Gare Saint-Lazare train station. I happened to be peeking through a gap in the fence with my camera at the moment the man jumped.

In spring 1947, Cartier-Bresson, with Robert Capa, David “Chim” Seymour, William “Bill” Vandivert, and George Rodger founded Magnum Photos. Capa’s brainchild, Magnum was a cooperative picture agency owned by its members.

Photographer: Henri Cartier-Bresson
Source: wikipedia.org