If you had to pick an image that epitomises the 20th Century for you, which would it be? You can have two, if you like. One from the present day perspective and a second from the perspective of someone living 500 years from now.

Here's mine for starters:

Present day - the image of a First World War soldier carrying a wounded comrade along a muddy trench. The one that is used on just about every bit of TV history vaguely connected with WWI.

500 years time - Dolly the Sheep looking innocently into the camera from under her curly locks.

smudger

Hi Smudger,

Present day - the image of a starving, injured, petrified little child, resulting from the evils of human beings.

500 years time - a large family of cloned individuals grinning innocently into the camera from under their curly locks.

Len

Present day - the image of a starving, injured, petrified little child, resulting from the evils of human beings

Len, I'd agree, except that there's nothing unique to the 20th Century about it, alas. How about Kenneth Jarecke's Gulf War corpse burned to death in his tank? Or the graffiti-ed Berlin Wall being knocked down with all the ordinary people dancing around on the ruins?

In thinking about this, it was horribly easy to think of photographs of horrors, but I had to think harder to come up with the Berlin Wall. Is it harder to think of positive images that are both historically important and don't need much explaining with a caption, than it is negative ones? Is it that we remember the horrors better? Or is it just that positive ones don't get printed?

Emma

Can I have a video image?

If so, my first would be an image of troops emerging from the barbwire trenches and heading out in to an uncertain fate of no-mans land during WWI; my second would be video footage of laser guided missles hitting their targets during the Gulf War.

I think it would illustrate how, no matter the extent of technological development during the 20th Century, war and conflict still dominates.



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ps. Great question, by the way, Smudger

EmmaD,

You're probably right... However, for me, the 20th Century seems to have exploded with so much local, national and inter-national terrorism, wars, starvation, deprivation with hardly a decade in that century showing any respite right across the world. The image I think encapsulates this for me is to show a victim, an innocent child, suffering as a result of so much evil.

I don't feel there is any negativity about this... but history will judge.

Len

It depends on the nature of the question, really. I read it as implying something that summed up the 20th Century as opposed to earlier centuries. Being deep in the late 15th Century at the moment, I'm only too aware that there's nothing new under the sun in human cruelty, only the means by which it is exercised. And even now, most people are killed or maimed by small arms and handguns, which are not new, not nuclear explosions or mass-terrorist attack.

Besides, there's a strong argument that it's not political but social history that makes most difference to most people's lives, so how about antibiotic manufacturing, or sewage treatment, or refrigeration, as real 20th Century innovations?

Emma

For me, the two things that mark the twentieth century are advancements in transport and communications.

So I'd say, from a present day perspective: a mobile phone.

And for 500 years in the future: Concorde. It will still look beautiful even then.

Dee

The mobile phone, particularly. It's the first time in history that who you can communicate with is not governed by where you are.

Emma

I've been trying to think about positive images as well. To me, defining images are iconic, famous photographs - literally a snapshot of time.

So, I've diteched my last suggestions and have gone for the image of the first man on the moon, and the mushroom cloud over Hiroshima after the atomic bomb was dropped.

I think the 20th Century is marked by technological development - these two images show what man can do if he puts his mind to it; send another person in to space, and cause unimaginable suffering.

I think that pretty much sums up the 20th Century for me.

these two images show what man can do if he puts his mind to it

Yeah. What about what woman can do if she puts her mind to it?

How about the contraceptive pill - a tiny thing that makes the most staggering difference to the world? Not very photogenic though (and invented by men, I admit).

And I'd love a picture on my wall of Erin Pizzey facing down a battering husband, and changing the world's attitude to domestic violence forever in the process?
Emma

I think my image of the 20th century would be Elvis Presley on the Sullivan show. Wars come and go. Rock 'n roll is forever.

My image 500 years from now?

Positively - The leader of the world federation declaring a universal end to war, poverty and disease.

Negatively - an ice cap that covers the whole planet.

JB

I agree with Beadle, but for different reasons. That picture of Buzz Aldrin taken by Neil Armstrong as they stood on the moon, and the mushroom cloud of an atomic bomb.

The moon image for the present day as an inspiration that with the will to achieve something a human being can do almost anything. The atomic bomb, for the future, when they will look back on the moment when God died, and when mankind ruled over his creation with the power to destroy it. (Not that I believe in God, God forbid!)

Good question.

Grinder

Yes, I guess the Moon Landing is a good one. What better way to remember the greatest hoax of the millenium?

(Tee hee. I'm just setting the cat among the pigeons. Please ignore me.)

JB

Shame on you JB!

Grinder

Such an interesting question.

For the current day image I hesitate between the photo taken from the Hubble telescope of the death of a star or the photo of the twisting cords of DNA. For me, they show man's hugely increased understanding of the very, very large and the very, very small.

As for the image 500 years from now I would choose a photo of a butterfly because I am afraid that they will be extinct.