70 Most Powerful Photos About Human Experience Ever Taken
Human has a long relationship with his emotions. Expressing an emotion is not so difficult, but perfectly capturing it in camera is far more difficult than it looks. This might be one of the reasons why ‘a picture is worth a thousand words’.
In this collection, we’ve listed some of the most ironic photos that perfectly capture the human emotion related to the love, innocence, despair, loss, and undying perseverance within all of us.
“when a man is prey to his emotions, he is not his own master, but lies at the mercy of fortune.” – Spinoza.
Most Powerful Human Emotion Photos Ever Taken
#01. A firefighter gives water to a koala during the devastating Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Australia, in 2009
Image credit: abc.net.au
#02. Starving child in Uganda holding hands with a missionary.
Image credit: Mike Wells
#03. Little boy playing the flute, with an attentive cat.
Image credit: Vladimir Zotov
#04. A Rwandan boy left scarred after being liberated from a death camp.
Image credit: James Nachtwey
#05. Dr. Religa monitors his patient’s vitals after 23-hour-long (successful) heart transplant. His assistant is sleeping in the corner. [1987]
Image credit: J. Steinfeld
The patient not only survived the surgery, but outlived his doctor.
Image credit: Unknown
#06. Man Falling from the World Trade Center on 9/11. ‘The Falling Man.’
Image credit: Richard Drew /AP
#07. A Buddhist monk shares his meal with a tiger at the Kanchanaburi ‘Tiger Temple’ in Thailand.
Image credit: Wojtek Kalka
#08. Diego Frazão Torquato, 12 year old Brazilian playing the violin at his teacher’s funeral. The teacher had helped him escape poverty and violence through music.
Image credit: Unknown
#09. 17 year old Jan Rose Kasmir offers a flower to soldiers during the Pentagon anti-war protest in 1967.
Image credit: Marc Riboud
#10. A Mursi tribe woman discovers Vogue magazine, Ethiopia.
Image credit: Eric Lafforgue
#11. Groom crying tears of joy after seeing his bride for the first time.
Image credit: Jeff Bailey
#12. 3 weeks old infant with albinism snuggles up to his cousin for a snooze.
Image credit: Patricia Willocq
#13. A Brazilian protester stands before gunfire during protests against corruption and police brutality.
Image credit: huffingtonpost.co.uk
#14. A man was playing bamboo music in Tenganan Village, Bali (2010) to entertain a disabled child which is not his son.
Image credit: Ario Wibisono
#15. Candy Cigarette
Image credit: Sally Mann
#16. A bus of caring people save a woman who tried to commit suicide in China.
Image credit: scnews.newssc.org
#17. Thania Sayne leans on the headstone of her husband the day before their wedding anniversary on 16 October 2013.
Image credit: corbisimages.com
#18. The first mother in space. Anna Fisher, astronaut, with stars in her eyes on the cover of Life magazine in 1985.
Image credit: Life Magazine (1985)
#19. A journalist dashes across a bridge between to rescue a baby during Civil War in 1936.
Image credit: Horace Abrahams
#20. A woman sits amidst the wreckage caused by a massive earthquake and ensuing tsunami, in Natori, northern Japan, in March 2011
Image credit: Asahi Shimbun, Toshiyuki Tsunenari /AP
#21. Old man kissing his wife.
Image credit: Unknown
#22. The Little Parisian (1952).
Image credit: Willy Ronis
#23. Caroline Joan Peixoto, City Arts, photographed classical ballet students at rehearsal in Rwanda’s only classical ballet school.
Image credit: Caroline Joan Peixoto
#24. How to be happy? put a rabbit on your head!
Image credit: Unknown
#25. A North Korean waves at his South Korean brother after inter-Korean temporary family reunions.
Image credit: reddit.com
#26. A Boy Carrying His Dog Through Filipino Flood Waters
Image credit: theatlantic.com
#27. Captain Donald Spindler pulls 6 year-old Aaliyah Frazier from a fire in Indiana.
Image credit: Evansville Courier & Press
#28. Mother holding a child.
Image credit: Kristen DeYoung
#29. Kimono Girl.
Image credit: Itsuo Inouye
#30. A curious Afghan girl holds the hand of an American soldier.
Image credit: reddit.com
#31. Man working in a coal mine.
Image credit: Daniel Becerril
#32. Indian woman laughing.
Image credit: Unknown
#33. A man protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing [1989]
![Powerful photos - A man protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing [1989]](https://i2.wp.com/www.instantshift.com/assets/uploads/2014/10/human-emotion-powerful-photos-a-24.jpg "A man protests in Tiananmen Square, Beijing [1989]")
Image credit: Stuart Franklin
#34. Wife of a fallen Marine, sleeps by his casket the night before his burial.
Image credit: Todd Heisler
#35. 100,000 monks in prayer for a better world.
Image credit: Luke Duggleby
#36. Jeneil Williams for Vogue Germany.
Image credit: Julia Noni
#37. The child of a KKK member touches his reflection in an African American police officer’s riot shield during a demonstration. [1992]
Image credit: Todd Robertson
#38. Protester plays piano over the sounds of chaos, with riot police in the backdrop.
Image credit: The DO Art Foundation
#39. A Russian soldier playing an abandoned piano in Chechnya in 1994.
Image credit: drugoi.livejournal.com
#40. Five-year-old gypsy boy on New Year’s Eve 2006 in the gypsy community of St. Jacques, Perpignan, Southern France. It is common for little boys to smoke in St. Jacques.
Image credit: Jesco Denzel
#41. Bruno Morandi captures a tribal Chhetri woman in Nepal. [2009]
![Bruno Morandi captures a tribal Chhetri woman in Nepal. [2009]](https://i2.wp.com/www.instantshift.com/assets/uploads/2014/10/human-emotion-powerful-photos-a-15.jpg "Bruno Morandi captures a tribal Chhetri woman in Nepal. [2009]")
Image credit: Bruno Morandi
#42. A boy with green eyes from Afghanistan.
Image credit: Steve McCurry
#43. An Indian man in the festival of Holi (Festival of colors).
Image credit: Steve McCurry
#44. Supporters celebrate as Minnesota legalizes gay marriage.
Image credit: Denver Post
#45. Violinist, Nancy Dinovo, cries while playing during a service at Christ Church Cathedral in downtown Vancouver for the September 11 victims.
Image credit: Christopher J. Morris
#46. A child of the Erbore tribe, Ethiopia.
Image credit: Eric Lafforgue
#47. ‘Against All Prejudices’ – Punk rocker and kid at a Gay Pride parade.
Image credit: reddit.com
#48. Clara Gantt is reunited with her husband’s body after more than 60 years. Sergeant Joseph Grantt went missing during the Korean war.
Image credit: Andrew Renneisen
#49. A boy crosses a London street in the 1960s with a toy double decker.
Image credit: Notman Photographics Archives
#50. Russian special troops soldier with a butterfly on his fingers.
Image credit: Unknown
#51. Lt. Colonel Robert L. Stirm is reunited with his family after being taken prisoner during the Vietnam war.
Image credit: Unknown
#52. Vintage swing dancers!
Image credit: Unknown
#53. Children’s smile in Life behind polar circle.
Image credit: Aleksandr Romanov
#54. A sad old man.
Image credit: Phil Marion
#55. Papua New Guinea woman during a Singsing celebration in Mount Hagen
Image credit: Eric Lafforgue
#56. A young girl saying goodbye through a train window at Hefei, Anhui Province.
Image credit: anninhthudo.vn
#57. Young man just found out his brother was killed.
Image credit: Nhat V. Meyer
#58. The tattoo of wounded soldier Kyle Hockenberry becomes truth.
Image credit: Laura Rauch
#59. Agim Shala is passed through a barbed wire fence to his grandparents at a camp for refugees of the Kosovo War.
Image credit: Carol Guzy
#60. Skater girls in Tehran.
Image credit: Humans Of Tehran
#61. A child with members of the Muslim community attending midday prayers at Strasbourg Grand Mosque in France on the first day of Ramadan, 2013
Image credit: Vincent Kessler
#62. A Russian war veteran kneels beside the tank he spent the war in, now a monument.
Image credit: englishrussia.com
#63. ‘Wait For Me Daddy,’ by Claude P. Dettloff in New Westminster, Canada, October 1, 1940
Image credit: Claud Detloff
#64. Demonstration of condom usage at a public market in Jayapura, capital of Papua, 2009.
Image credit: Adri Tambunan
#65. Flower power.
Image credit: Bernie Boston
#66. Russian soldiers preparing for the Battle of Kursk, July 1943.
Image credit: Shirak Karapetyan-Milshtein
#67. An Afghan man offers tea to soldiers.
Image credit: Rafiq Maqbool / AP
#68. Terri Gurrola is reunited with her daughter after serving in Iraq for 7 months.
Image credit: Louie Favorite
#69. Sergeant Frank Praytor looks after a two-week old kitten during the height of the Korean War.
Image credit: Unknown
#70. An Irish teenager yells at British soldiers during unrest in Northern Ireland.
Image credit: Unknown
While compiling this, it’s always a possibility that we missed some other powerful human emotion photos. Feel free to share it with us.
interesting article …. pleased to see these rare happening with humans …
wow.. Fantastic steps.. I really like it. keep up :-)
I am just speechless! The pictures are awesome. Mostly # 1,2,13,17,25 pictures are great. Each picture carrying different meaning. Just awesome.
Wow, these image really made me feel something. Is is possible that you could post more?
Indeed a convincing photos! It made me shift to sad and then happy real quick. I just got affected by the human emotions photos.
Several years ago an American magazine (can’t remember which one) ran a 2-page splash page photo of a half dozen 7-year old Russian children all born without left hands due to toxic waste in the water table from chemical factories in a central Russian city. I had hoped to find that photo here. :(
Might be worth searching for, if anyone is interested.
awesome great pic . best nice job .
this is so inspiring
this is so heart touching…
All the pictures are wonderful
Full of emotions, thank you for those meaningful pictures.
Love
some photos really touch my heart
Real heart touching pictures.
lots of love