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56 Photos From Around The World That Hit Harder Than Words Ever Could
Photography, if you want to be clinical about it, is a simple transaction: light hits film or a sensor, and whatever falls inside that small rectangle of a viewfinder becomes an image. But the result is rarely clinical. A good photograph can knock the air out of you.
One Reddit thread happened to be an unlikely place to see that in action: a user asked people to share the “hardest” photos from their countries, and the replies came through with exactly that. Take a look below and see which ones live up to the prompt.
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#1
Kosovo
This one from the war showing a young mother marching to safety while breastfeeding her daughter. The picture is now a mosaic and the mother and daughter are alright :)
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 14 hours ago
Those eyes are so haunting. I remember that one at the time.
RELATED:
#2
Canada
Wurm42: For anyone not familiar, this is Canadian athlete Terry Fox. After having his right leg amputated due to cancer, he started the "Marathon of Hope," trying to raise money for cancer research by running across Canada.
Terry started in St. Johns, Newfoundland, running the equivalent of a full marathon (26.2 miles) every day. He ran more than 2,400 miles (4,000 km) and reached Thunder Bay, Ontario before he had to stop.
Terry stopped because it turned out he'd been doing all the running after his cancer came back, and it had reached his lungs. He died nine months later.
He is an inspirational figure for Canadians and disabled people all over the world.
Sam Trudeau 1 hour ago
The marathon continues every year. We invented insulin, it's our mission to help provide free cancer cures
Load More Replies... #3
Germany
An east German (GDR) soldier fleeing to Westberlin during the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961.
Spencer's slave no longer 14 hours ago (edited)
19 year old Conrad Schumann defected on August 15 1961. He fled into the French Sector, was taken to a local Police station and reunited with his family who had already fled to the West.
#4
Poland
Polish Women’s Strike 2020.
#5
Ukraine
Kharkiv. 2014. Leninopad “Leninfalls.”
#6
Morocco
The last photo taken of a wild Barbary Lion. Taken in 1924.
#7
Germany
Survivors of the concentration camp Buchenwald showing how they "lived" in the barracks.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 14 hours ago
And some A$$holes think it never happened. The fact it happened makes me sick. The denires also make me sick.
Geobugi🇰🇷🇰🇭 13 hours ago
You honestly can not take this people as serious. Sometimes i have the feeling that some people just blast that sort of opinion to get attention so i deny that to them, just ignore the hôlocaust deniers, flat earther, anti vaxxers and all the other nutjobs so they hopefully find another hobby
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Emilie Beard 5 hours ago
This happened to my uncle Hubert. Unrcognizable when he fnally got home, but he still died from all that happened to him in the barracks. Only lived another 4-5 months. So sad, so thin and emaciated and to this day I cannot understand the cruelty involved. Will never understand it.
#8
United Kingdom
Live Aid, 1985. Wembley stadium jam packed and roughly one in every three people worldwide watched it. One of the last great humanitarian projects almost every country contributed to and one of the last great events hosted in the UK.
Spencer's slave no longer 14 hours ago (edited)
The greatest showman who left behind a great musical legacy.
Ray Ceeya (RayCeeYa) 14 hours ago
They pioneered rock opera and arena rock so bands like Styx could fall flat on their face. BTW not a Styx fan.
Load More Replies... #9
Iceland. This Is Fine
Quarkonium2925: Just another Tuesday in Iceland.
Remi (He/Him) 8 hours ago
The annoyed way the person is standing 😂 like they're saying "Oh, you have to be kidding me, stop that nonsense at once" to the volcano
Novlette Williams 40 minutes ago
It's Iceland, they probably are saying just that.
Load More Replies... #10
South Africa
27 April 1994 - our first democratic election where everyone has the right to vote. This is a line at the ballot box.
Earonn - 6 hours ago
To be allowed to vote is such a precious right - and then people don't use it because they're too lazy (but afterwards they complain about 'the bad politicians' - guys, you are bad citizens, what do you think you deserve?)
Novlette Williams 37 minutes ago
Not to worry the Americans who refuse to vote soon won't have to.
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#12
Belgium
Belgium, 1927.
Einstein. Curie. Bohr. Planck. Heisenberg. Schrödinger. Dirac.
The greatest scientific gathering ever photographed.
Geobugi🇰🇷🇰🇭 13 hours ago
This is fake because trump is not in it. You people probably forget he has 10 nobel prices! Best scientist in the world! Everybody says so! No one in the history of science is as smart as him!😂 Sorry, i could not resist
#13
Russia
This one is pretty cool.
VikingAbroad 13 hours ago
He had fed her when she was (I try to remember) a cub herself. One day as a grown up she showed up with her own cub begging for food.
#14
The United States Of America
Ruby Bridges, New Orleans, 1960.
Cacafuego: Pride is all Americans should feel, looking at this photo. Pride in tough-as-nails little Ruby and all of our fellow countrymen who stood up and claimed the freedom and equality we are promised. Forget about everything else for the moment. That's an American right there.
CrazeMase. In case anyone wants to know how recent this was, she is 71 now. She's still alive, she currently does political activism.
Multa Nocte 10 hours ago
Sorry - I also feel shame for how the people treated this poor child and others like her.
Stephanie A Mutti 5 hours ago
She was too young to have to be this brave. The "adults" arguing against her ought to have been ashamed of themselves.
Norfolk and good 6 hours ago (edited)
She had to be taught alone because parents' didn't want their child in the same classroom as her, all but one teacher refused to teach her, she could only eat food brought from home because people were threatening to poison her, her father lost his job, the local store where the family had shopped for years refused to serve them anymore, and her grandparents were evicted off the land they'd lived on for decades.
nicholas nolan 5 hours ago
She was even frightened to eat the food she brought! Monstrous.
Load More Replies... #15
Lithuania
Baltic Way, 1989 - peaceful protest of Baltic people against the USSR regime by creating a live human chain across the 3 Baltic countries. This exact picture should be taken in Lithuania.
Kristiina Männiste 12 hours ago
I wanted to participate in the Baltic Way (I was a very political 6 year old😅) , but my parents forbid it because the fear of KGB repressions. They thought the Baltic Way would be smothered in blood. Thank heaven it was not. But the people who participated were very very brave.
Kristiina Männiste 11 hours ago
I also begged my grandpa to take me to the parliament house, when the tanks of the August coup were rolling in to displace our government (I was visiting them in Tallinn at the moment). But nooo, I was evacuated to their dacha out of the city and had to follow the course of things via radio only. Ever have History happen a 15 min bus drive from you and you do not have the 15 kopeyek for the fare?
Load More Replies... #16
Canada
Canuck the downtown Eastside crow. Stealing a knife from a crime scene.
#17
Poland
Professor Simona Kossak, Polish zoologist and ecologist, with her pet wild boar in her hut in the Białowieża Primeval Forest.
#18
Hungary
I have many (including some from the 1956 revolution), but this is the one that still sticks with me.
Not Photoshop, it was the aftermath of the "red mud" disaster that happened in 2010. A faulty wall broke down, and a 2-meter-high wave of liquid bauxite residue (causing chemical burns) flooded the nearby village, [fatal to]10 people. There are many iconic photos from this incident as well, but this is probably my favorite.
Flickers_and_Sparks 7 hours ago
At first I thought it was two pictures stuck together. Looks nasty indeed
Anna Losonczy 8 hours ago
My father as a firefighter was there to help, it was a disaster indeed.
#19
Estonia
#20
The United States Of America
It's the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The photographer is Richard Lasher (I think!). It's a pretty famous photo in my state.
Remi (He/Him) 8 hours ago
Richard Lasher confirmed. He almost didn't make it out from under the eruption on his motorcycle and that Ford Pinto was toast
#21
Scotland
Statue of kelpies, a Scottish mythical creature.
Spencer's slave no longer 14 hours ago
Yes, it's definitely photo shopped in.
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#22
During The 2021 Protests. Colombia
During the 2021 protests.
#23
Australia
blondzie: That’s the most Australia thing I’ve seen.
#24
New Zealand
Neon_Pickles 16 hours ago
Aotearoa, as it should properly be called. Any fellow Kiwis here? These men were part of the Maori Battalion in the Second World War. From the New Zealand National Library: Members of the Maori Battalion who had fought in Greece, performing a haka for the King of Greece at Helwan, Egypt. Photograph taken circa 24 June 1941 by an unidentified official photographer. The four men in the foreground are, left to right; John Manuel, Maaka White, Te Kooti Reihana, and Rangi Henderson.
Spencer's slave no longer 14 hours ago
Fellow Kiwi here, thank you for naming these soldiers. This is a photo of the Maōri Battalion I haven't seen in a long time, Waiouru Army Museum was where I first saw it.
Load More Replies... Earonn - 6 hours ago
These men are the reason why the Americans and British who babble about "WE ALONE WON THE WAR" are such disgusting fvcks. It was a shared effort, and to pretend that soldiers like these Māori didn't exist is only marginally better than fighting them.
nicholas nolan 5 hours ago
If one peice of the puzzle of victory was missing, the world would be in a very different place.
Load More Replies... John Dilligaf 45 minutes ago
fun fact: The name of the New Zealand Army in Maori, Ngāti Tūmatauenga, translates as the "'Tribe of the God of War"
#25
Spain
Some of the thousands of volunteers that cleaned the Galician coast after the "Prestige" oil spill.
#26
France
Sinking of the oil tanker Amoco Cadiz in 1978 off the coast of Brittany.
Nicole Weymann 11 hours ago
The photo looks a bit like a non sequitur collage, with the sinking ship resembling a forced perspective giant whale, and the shutters partially mirrored ZZZs implying sleep.
#27
Chile
This photo after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that happened in 2010 always stayed with me.
#28
United Kingdom
The Blitz.
Norfolk and good 6 hours ago
This is a very famous picture called St. Paul's Survives.
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#29
Nepal
This is Singha Durbar (Lion's palace) that had most administrative centers of Nepal Government. It was burnt during GenZ protest last September.
#30
Spain
Julie Rogers 14 hours ago
This image captures the moment a car carrying Spanish Prime Minister Luis Carrero Blanco was launched into the air by a b**b. The assassination occurred on December 20, 1973, in Madrid, Spain.
Miguel López Genicio 11 hours ago
It would be worth noting that he was Primer Minister in a dictatorship, and not in democracy.
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John Dilligaf 43 minutes ago
and hence the macabre joke about Carrero being the "first Spanish astronaut"
#32
The Netherlands
October 2025: Storm Benjamin hits the coast at Vlissingen, the Netherlands.
#33
Ireland
Fat Harry (Oi / You) 10 hours ago
That's an army b**b disposal technician going to diffuse a reported b**b in the red van. The text on the wall is apposite.
#34
Pakistan
K-2, Chogori casts its shadow over China.
Rali Meyer 9 hours ago (edited)
here is a myth: K2 initialy never had a real name because it is too far from any human who could have seen and named it before Colonel T.G. Montgomerie "detected" it
#36
Venezuela
A heroic young man destroying a statue of the exdictator Hugo Chavez during the 2024 protests.
#37
Australia
Australian volunteer firefighter, Daniel Knox, during a controlled burn.
#38
United States Of America
Moon Landing.
jjtnd1: Winner winner. Maybe the hardest pic humanity has taken to date
#39
Northern Ireland
Spencer's slave no longer 14 hours ago
Press photos of "The Troubles" were often black and white.
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#41
Nigeria
#42
Saudi Arabia
Fajr prayer in a shelter in eastern Saudi Arabia during the Gulf war.
#44
Finland
The president of Finland in the 1970s.
#45
The United States Of America
Tornado of Beaver City, Nebraska (1989) by Merrilee Thomas, depicting their daughter Audra and a tornado.
#46
India
This was the start of India's space program -- the first sounding rocket being transported on a bicycle in 1963. And in 2023, we became the fourth country to get to the Moon.
Stardust she/her 8 hours ago
I love this story. Basically India was such a poor country at the time that the scientists and engineers had to manually assemble the rocket at the local high school as well as manually transport it to the launch site which was behind a church in Kerala. They would transport rocket parts via bicycles like in this photo or by walking or in bullock carts as there was not enough money to hire trucks to do the same. Dr Vikram Sarabhai (founder of ISRO) and APJ Abdul Kalam (scientist as well as President of India) were instrumental in this mission. ISRO has a reputation of doing a lot with very less budget, such as the time we got to Mars on our maiden attempt, something no other country has managed to do with a budget less than that of a typical Hollywood movie
#47
The United States Of America
Remi (He/Him) 8 hours ago
Charles Clyde Ebbets. Looks like he was even less concerned with safety, at least based on the pics of him you can find
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#48
Australia
#49
India
Jessica Daus-Warner 4 hours ago
Looks like one of those magicians that make folks disappear behind the curtain lol
#50
India
#51
United States Of America
Julie Rogers 14 hours ago
Three of the six Marines in the photograph—Sergeant Michael Strank, Corporal Harlon Block, and Private First Class Franklin Sousley—were k****d in action.
#52
Canada
Sidney Crosby just after scoring the golden goal in 2010. Canada has so many war and forest fire photos that I feel like a positive photo is way harder.
#53
Argentina
Cuppa tea? 49 minutes ago
If this goal was blatant cheating, his second goal was pure godlike genius.
Spencer's slave no longer 14 hours ago
The "Hand of God goal" by Maradona in the 1986 World Cup quarter finals, Argentina v England. That was deemed not a handball and England were knocked out of the Cup.
Load More Replies...
#56
The United States Of America
I will look for ANY EXCUSE to show this image of Nixon bowling.
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