Behind the Shutter: The Untold Stories of Iconic Photographs

On June fifth, 1989, a man carrying two shopping bags stepped in front of a column of Type 59 tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace. And in that moment, an accidental icon was created. Last week on "Behind the Shutter," we talked about how one frame can define an entire historical event. This is probably the single greatest example of that in the twentieth century. Everyone knows the image. But almost no one knows the story. So let's start there. Who took the picture? Because I feel like I've seen slightly different versions of it. You have. And that's the first crucial detail. There wasn't just one photographer. At least four different still photographers and a few camera crews captured the event, all from the balconies of the Beijing Hotel, which overlooked the square.

They were all in the same hotel? Right. The crackdown had happened the day before. The area was not safe. The hotel was one of the only vantage points. The most famous shot, the one we all see, was taken by Jeff Widener for the Associated Press. He was shooting with a 400-millimeter lens. So he was pretty far away. Hundreds of yards away. He was injured, had the flu, and was running out of film. A tourist actually gave him a roll of film that he used to get the shot. Another version, a wider one, was taken by Stuart Franklin for Magnum Photos. He had to smuggle his film out in a box of tea to get it past the security police.

Wow. So the act of just getting the photo was a story in itself. It always is. But the real story is what happened in the street. The man doesn't just stand there. The lead tank stops. It tries to go around him. He sidesteps, blocking it again. This happens two, three times. It’s a dance. A terrifying, silent dance between a man with his groceries and a fifty-ton tank. And the tank commander just… stops. They don't run him over. They don't. The commander even cuts the engine. And that's where the photograph ends. But the film footage shows what happened next. Wait—what happened next? The man climbs up onto the hull of the lead tank.

He walks right up to the commander's hatch and seems to have a short conversation. He climbed ON the tank? I never knew that. We never see that part. Almost nobody does. You can't hear what he's saying, of course. But he's talking to the soldier inside. After a moment, he climbs down. And then, two figures in blue rush in from the side of the road and pull him away into the crowd. And he's gone. Just… pulled away? By who? Nobody knows. Were they government agents arresting him? Or were they concerned citizens trying to save his life? We will likely never know. And we will almost certainly never know his name. He is just "Tank Man." Does that anonymity change the power of the image?

I feel like it makes it stronger. It makes it universal. This is where we see a pattern. When a hero is anonymous, they become an avatar for anyone. He isn't a specific dissident with a name and a history. He is simply a person, any person, standing up to absolute power. The shopping bags are the key. They signal that he's just an ordinary man. He could have been on his way home from the market. It makes the courage feel accessible, in a way. Not something for saints or leaders, but for… us. Exactly. The photo asks a question that a picture of a famous leader never could. It asks, "What would you do?" He was right. He was also, in ways we can't even fathom, completely erased from the official record inside his own country.

The photograph is his only memorial. So the final image isn't just about defiance. It’s about memory. It's about the fight over memory. The image exists as a profound act of public courage, but the man himself is a ghost. He exists everywhere, and he exists nowhere at all. And that’s the question that hangs over every single frame taken that day. Where did he go?