A single young Chinese protester carrying what appears as a shopping bag refuses to move out of the way of an advancing column of tanks on the Chang’an Avenue. The first tank tries to go around, but the young man steps in front of it again. They repeat this maneuver several times before the tank stops and turns off its motor.
He then climbs onto the leading tank and speaks to the driver. Then he jumps back down again and gets whisked to the side of the road by an unidentified group of people, and he disappears into the crowd.
Also dubbed “The Unknown Rebel,” the Beijing dissident who brought armed tanks to a standstill was never arrested, and what became of him still remains a mystery.
Chinese student activists who supported the pro-democracy movement captured the attention of the world´s media with their seven-week occupation of the square. The authorities had sent army tanks in the wee hours to break up the demonstration. More than seven hundred people were reportedly killed in what followed later.
Time magazine has cited the unidentified protester as one of the “Top 20 leaders and revolutionaries” of the 20th century, and the photograph one of the Top 100 photos of the century. It was featured in Life´s "100 Photographs That Changed the World" in 2003.
This extraordinary confrontation has since become an icon of struggles for freedom around the world.
Magnum photographer Stuart Franklin, AP photographer Jeff Widener and a few others took the iconic photograph called the “Tank Man.” Franklin has a wider field of view than others, showing more tanks further away. Widener took the photo from the sixth floor of the Beijing Hotel, which was less than a kilometer away from the point, with a 400mm lens. Eyewitness reporter Charlie Cole won a World Press Award for a similar photo, who was reporting for Newsweek then.
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