De “Woodstock” to repression
When Stuart Franklin, world renowned photographer, I was on a terrace crowded with people, five floors above Tiananmen Square, in Beijing, pointing his camera at a man standing defiantly in front of a row of Chinese tanks, thought it was too far from the action. However, 25 years after that iconic day of 5 June 1989, The image has become the ultimate symbol of the power of a person against the power of the State. This is how it happened.
Tom Mackey – Amnesty International journalist in Hong Kong
Tiananmen Square during protests, 1989 © Hong Kong Alliance
Stuart had arrived in Beijing a week before the scandalous repression carried out by the Chinese government against a group of peaceful students on the night of 3 June 1989. His editor at the Magnum photo agency knew that what had started as a hunger strike by students in Beijing's main square in April of that year was turning into something of historic proportions.. Stuart was commissioned for that job.
“I was looking forward to going. I knew what was happening was serious because, in china, challenging the state was something very serious”, Stuart tells us from his home in south London.
The photographer arrived in the Chinese capital with little more than a backpack and his cameras, He rented a bicycle and started touring the city. He was trying to understand the unprecedented events that were taking place around him..
“It was extraordinary. when I arrived, The atmosphere was like a kind of 'Chinese Woodstock'. Although there were people on hunger strike in a store, there were also conversations and music. "It was like some kind of rock festival.", dice.
Stuart Franklin is a photographer, member and former president of the Magnum Photos agency (2006-2009). Franklin photographed the Tiananmen Square uprising and extensively documented the Beijing uprising, earning him the World Press Photo award. © AI
But things quickly took a turn for the worse and, when tanks appeared, It became clear that the Chinese authorities were going to take strong action. “Things changed when the army intervened on 1 and 2 June. The atmosphere became more gloomy. They started shooting, there were deaths, and then, gradually, repression began.”
The tank man
No one knows exactly how many people died when the Chinese army charged the students., unionists and residents protesting in Tiananmen Square on 3 and 4 June.
And no one expected what happened next.
When the sun rose on Monday morning 5 June 1989, Stuart ran to the terrace of the Beijing Hotel, across the street, in front of Tiananmen Square. The foreign correspondents had gathered there to witness what was happening in the square.
And then they saw it.
A man in a white shirt and dark pants approached a row of tanks on Chang'an Avenue, armed with only two bags.
He walked from one side to the other to prevent them from advancing. The tanks moved with him.
“We were stunned.. I would have expected the tank, very slowly but gradually, will move forward. The fact that, instead of doing it, “When she started dancing and negotiating with the man, it was a huge surprise.”, dice Stuart.
“ It was like David against Goliath. The man was tiny in front of that huge tank, and made it feel that the influence of a single man could control the power of the State.”
Stuart, emotional, He pressed the shutter button on his camera, just as he had done on many previous occasions during the protests, capturing the atmosphere of events rarely seen in China.
Repression during protests in Tiananmen Square
left hundreds of people dead and injured © Hong Kong Alliance
“When I took that photograph, What was going through my head was that he was miles away., too far. I thought I wish I was closer, I wish I was on the street. I had flashes of memories of truly extraordinary photographs such as those of the Czechs demonstrating in front of the Russian tanks that entered Prague in 1968. Thought: 'Vaya por Dios, I'm miles away, esto no va a tener demasiado interés'", He says while looking at the series of images he took ago. 25 years.
“¿Did you take the photo?”
The next day, when he tried to leave Beijing with his reel hidden in a French television producer's tea can, Stuart received a call from his Magnum editor in Paris, that he only told him: “¿Did you take the photo of the man in front of the tank?”.
It was then that Stuart learned of the image that, for years to come, would illustrate what happened those days.
“We didn't have television in Beijing, so we didn't know how big that image had become. That event spread throughout the world, from the BBC and other media. People saw those images of a man literally dancing in front of a tank, preventing their progress, stopping it, y eso es lo que se ha convertido en icónico", Stuart explained.
“ If it had happened today, everyone would have tweeted it. Everyone would have had that photo. If I had to summarize this image in one word, would be value. He defined the extraordinary courage of a man to stand in front of a row of tanks, sacrificing his own life for social justice as he saw it.”
