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Images that changed the world – Tank Man


In the video, a column of tanks slowly march towards Tiananmen Square, their bulk and menace somehow diminished by the empty roads. The whole square is empty. It's eerie, with a post-apocalyptic feel to it.

But then you see a man, in a white shirt, himself a dot against the grandeur of huge roads, clusters of trees as regimented as the approaching column of big, bad tanks.

He stands in the middle of the road, quickly side-stepping to get in line with the first tank. Funny, in a strange way, he has what looks to be two shopping bags, the banality of everyday domestic life juxtaposed against a serious act of protest.

The tank stops a good few feet away from. For a long 15 seconds, both stand there, like cowboys, the man with bags, the tank with a rotating gun turret.

And then the tanks attempts to move. He counters with a skip and once again, like David and Goliath, both stand opposed once more.

The enduring image is of that brief standoff, one man in front of not just one tank, but a whole army of them. It defies the logic of it all, after all, how can one human fight a tank, let alone a convoy of them?

Popularly referred to as Tank Man, the much speculated story of this brave man has been much debated, argued and mulled over in subsequent years, because it matters. It was a iconic moment in the history of the world, so much so that Time magazine, which referred to Tank Man as the Unknown Rebel, included him in its list of the 100 Most Influential People of the Century.

That image showed that no matter what, against all the odds, anything is possible, that one voice among millions, billions even, can be heard. One man can change the world.

But equally, the image only shows us one slice of history, a moment that couldn't last, a course of action that was ultimately brought to an end – two men dressed in blue kart him off. What happened to this man is lost, for now, to the many stories and theories, all of which could be plausible, all of which could be false.

Photographs, though speaking a thousand words, are like anything, only one side, one angle, one way of looking at it.

Two years ago another image came out, one which didn't reduce Tank Man's heroic effort, but contextualised it, added another narrative. In this picture, we see that the unknown man was in the middle of the road well ahead of the tanks reaching him – it implies it wasn't impulsive.

In the foreground two men are running away with a nonchalant man on a bike following up in the same direction. A discarded digger sits behind him. The eerie silence that is implied by the original picture is unveiled – there is fear, enough for someone to leave their vehicle behind, enough to make men run.

But the Tank Man has a mission. As crazy as it sounds, he wanted to stop the tanks. He would stop the tanks. And if he did it with bags, then so be it. Anything is possible.
 

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