Behind the Lens: The Untold Stories of Iconic Photographs

On June 5, 1989, a man carrying two shopping bags stopped a column of tanks on Chang’an Avenue in Beijing. And he did it the day AFTER the massacre. That’s the part people forget. The violence had already happened. The crackdown was complete. And then this one person just… walks out. Right. Last week on the show we talked about the stories behind iconic photographs, and this one might be the most powerful of them all. So who actually took it? Whose eye was behind that lens? It was an Associated Press photographer named Jeff Widener. And the craziest part? He almost missed it. He was on the fourth-floor balcony of the Beijing Hotel, injured, using a heavy teleconverter lens just to see the street.

A teleconverter? So he was pretty far away. Waaay far away. And at first, when he sees this guy walk into his frame, he's annoyed. He thinks the man is ruining his composition of the tanks. Wait, really? He thought the subject of one of the most famous photos in history was just… in the way? For a split second. Then he realizes what's happening. The lead tank stops. It tries to go around him. The man just sidesteps to block it again. And Widener just starts shooting. He only got three frames. Only one of them was sharp. That’s the one we all know. But I’ve heard other versions of that photo exist.

So he wasn’t the only one there? No, and that’s a critical part of the story. Stuart Franklin from Magnum Photos was on another balcony. Charlie Cole from Newsweek was there, too. Cole actually had to hide his film roll in the hotel toilet tank to keep the Public Security Bureau from confiscating it. Wow. So the risk was immense. You have no idea. They were documenting something the government was actively trying to erase in real time. But Widener’s photo was the one that got out first. It hit the AP wire, and from there, it went global. It became the symbol before the other images even had a chance.

Okay, so let's talk about the man himself. Do we know anything? Who was he? That is the question. The short answer is no. We don't know his name, and we don't know his fate. The most common theory is that he was a 19-year-old student named Wang Weilin, but it's never been confirmed. So this whole encounter… how long did it last? Not long. Maybe five minutes total. He stands there, has this silent standoff with the tank driver. At one point, he even climbs UP onto the hull of the lead tank. He climbed on it? I’ve never heard that part. Oh yeah. He speaks to the crew inside, though we don’t know what was said.

Then he climbs down, and a moment later, two figures in blue rush out, grab him, and hurry him away into the crowd. We never see him again. And we don’t know who they were? Government agents? Concerned citizens trying to save him? Exactly. It’s a complete mystery. The ambiguity is part of its power. He just vanishes from history, leaving only this image. It really is the ultimate David and Goliath picture. One person, with shopping bags, against a weapon of the state. It is. But the pattern we see over and over is that the image becomes a legend in the West, while it’s aggressively censored at home.

In China today, an entire generation has grown up having never seen that photograph. The event is scrubbed from their internet, from their history books. So the photograph becomes more powerful than the memory of the event itself, at least for the rest of the world. I think so. It raises the real question for people in my line of work. Is the icon the photograph itself? Or is it the act of defiance? The photo is just the evidence. The thing that proves it happened. The real story is a man, whose name we'll never know, who decided to stand. And you have to wonder… what makes a person do that?