Tank man: An enduring symbol of the 1989 Beijing uprising. The Chinese student who stood defiantly in front of a line of tanks on 5 June 1989, after the storming of Tiananmen Square, was never identified and became known simply as “Tank Man.” Reports suggest he was either imprisoned or executed. Associated Press photographer Jeff Widener captured the iconic image in which he was seen obstructing the tanks, with at least three other photographers also taking pictures and later publishing their accounts of the incident. Very few people in China knew about Tank Man in 1989, and his image is still officially banned in the country.

Burning monk: The precursor to the US entering the Vietnam War? Vietnamese Mahayana Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc set himself on fire on 11 June 1963 at a busy intersection in Saigon. He was protesting discrimination against Buddhists by the regime of South Vietnamese leader Ngo Dinh Diem, who presided over pro-Catholic laws and policies. The following day, he would be on the cover of newspapers around the world, prompting the US to put pressure on Diem to meet the Buddhists’ demands ― and less than two years later, to enter the war in Vietnam. Malcolm Browne, Saigon bureau chief for the Associated Press at the time, would later recall being one of very few journalists to witness Quang Duc’s actions, in an interview with Time magazine. President John F. Kennedy would later say, “No news picture in history has generated so much emotion around the world as that one.”

An image can also encapsulate the spirit of a particular era, or a celebrity brand (as every social media influencer is well aware).

Marilyn Monroe’s ‘flying skirt’: the most iconic of all her photos. On the set of Billy Wilder’s The Seven Year Itch on 15 September 1954, photographer Sam Shaw caught world-famous actress Marilyn Monroe’s playful response to a gust of wind from a subway grate blowing her skirt in the air. Both a large crowd of bystanders and the press were on hand to witness the moment, which was later portrayed as a one-off, spontaneous shot. It turns out, however, that this was all part of the act — and the pose was carefully planned and choreographed.