World Press Photography has an annual award for photojournalists. They have put up a showcase of the winner from each year for the past 50 years. These photos are not “the best photos of the year” or “the most powerful photos of the last 50 years” – rather they are simply the winners of the award for the last 50 years. That being said, these pictures will affect you emotionally.
High-tech (and high resolution) Flash version is available here.
Low-tech version (with slightly more detailed descriptions) is available here.
Another image that I’ve found in this Ars Technica thread about the power of photography:
Sudan Famine “Pulitzer Prize” winner 1994: photo and photgrapher’s biography.
Photojournalism would be a hard, hard thing to do.
Thanks for these. I looked at them just before leaving work, and started to show them Hyunji when I got home, but I realized that I couldn’t make it through a second time. They’re that moving.
Sad to say but I remember many of these photos in newspapers or on the news. Human tragedy and suffering are so apparent in the photos, as well as the violence we do to each other which always astounds me.