New Photo of Tiananmen's Tank Man

The photograph of an anonymous man standing down a tank in Tiananmen Square is one of the defining images of the twentieth century. On Thursday, the day before the 20th anniversary of the taking of that photograph, The New York Times published for the first time a new photo of the famous confrontation. The so-called “Tank Man” is only a small figure on the left side of the image, his posture erect and his back facing the lens of the camera in contrast to the men in the foreground who are facing the camera as they run away. On the right-hand side of the image, the tanks approach. “While working as a reporter in Beijing during the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, [photographer Terri Jones] shot many photographs and recorded several hours of video. It wasn’t until weeks afterwards, when he had returned to Japan, that he discovered the magnitude of what he had captured—an iconic moment in history from an entirely unique angle.”