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Matinee: 'Tank Man'
27 July 2024
Saturday matinees long ago let us escape from the ordinary world to the island of the Swiss Family Robinson or the mutinous decks of the Bounty. Why not, we thought, escape the usual fare here with Saturday matinees of our favorite photography films?
So we're pleased to present the 563rd in our series of Saturday matinees today: Tank Man.
In this 12:03 interview Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin talks about his 1989 photograph of the Tank Man at Tiananmen Square as part of the Incite Project.
The project is an active collection of photographic prints supporting photographers who seek social and political change.
From 1980 until 1985, Franklin worked with Agence Presse Sygma photographing the civil war in Lebanon, unemployment in Britain, famine in Sudan and the Heysel Stadium disaster. He joined Magnum Photos in 1985, becoming a full member in 1989 when he photographed the uprising in Tiananmen Square. His shot of the Tank Man was published in Time Magazine. He subsequently won a World Press Photo Award for his coverage of the uprising in Beijing.
He was shooting as several tanks broke through the line of soldiers, driving up the road. that's when "a guy came out of the crowd from our side of the street and started remonstrating with a tank driver." He climbed on the tank and came back down and was eventually taken away.
That was what he saw as he was shooting the sequence from a hotel room.
He didn't think it was a great shot. And he wasn't the only one who got it. There were two others he recalls who got the same shot. None of them were able to get their film processed promptly under the circumstances.
But at the time, TV coverage of the standoff allowed the first President Bush to argue the Chinese had shown restraint so the U.S. could continue to do business with them, Franklin remembers. And suddenly everyone wanted the picture.
It was only several days after the event that the world saw the Tank Man photograph and read whatever meaning they wanted into it.
But the Chinese government has never said what happened to the Tank Man or any of the students killed in the square. Which is certainly a different kind of restraint.