Jeff Widener (born August 11, 1956) is an American photojournalist. He has covered assignments in over 100 countries involving civil unrest, wars, and social issues. Widener is best known for his image of the Tank Man confronting a column of tanks in Tiananmen Square in the aftermath of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989, which made him a nominated finalist for the 1990 Pulitzer.
Widener was born August 11, 1956, in Long Beach, California.[1] He grew up in Scottsdale, Arizona, and Southern California, outside of Los Angeles.[2][3] When he was six years old, he became interested in photography after meeting his father's friend who worked for Life.[2][4]
He attended Cleveland High School in Northridge, California where he took his first photography class before transferring to Reseda High School for his senior year to study photography under Warren King.[2][4] Reseda High School had a government funded dark room, and King's program had resulted in more photography scholarships than any other high school in the United States.[2]
In 1974 when he was seventeen, Widener received the Kodak Scholastic National Photography Scholarship; the prize included a study tour of England, France, Italy, Kenya and Tanzania.[2][5][4] He attended Moorpark College and Los Angeles Pierce College where he was a photographer for the campus newspaper and majored in photojournalism.[2]
He returned to the United States in 1984, working as a staff photographer for The Miami News. From 1987 to 1995, he was an Associated Press picture editor for Southeast Asia, where he covered major stories in the region from the Gulf War to the Olympics from Bangkok, Thailand.[2][7] Other assignments included East Timor, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Burma, Syria, Jordan, India, Laos, Vietnam, Pakistan, and many more.
In 1995, he returned to Miami, working as a staff photographer for United Press International. He left that position in 1997, working as a staff photographer for The Honolulu Advertiser from 1997 to 2010.[8][3] After working as a freelance photographer based in Hamburg, Germany, Widener moved to Mexico City, Mexico where he works for Zuma Press.[9]
Through the years, he has covered assignments in over 100 countries involving civil unrest, wars, and social issues, as well as the South Pole.[4]
Widener was present in Beijing at the height of the 1989 Tiananmen Square protests. He was injured during the night event of June 3, 1989, after a stray rock hit him in the head during a mob scene on the Chang'an Avenue. His Nikon F3 titanium camera absorbed the blow, saving his life.[10][11][3] Widener described his experience in a 2012 interview:
The split second I raised the camera to my eye, a terrific blow snapped my neck back leaving blood all over my destroyed camera. A stray rock had hit me squarely in the face and the Nikon F3 Titanium camera had absorbed the blow sparing my life. A second later a Chinese soldier jumped out of the back of the blazing APC to surrender but the crowd moved in on him with knives, hatchets, steel pipes and rocks. There was nothing I could do but pick up a stray bicycle and peddle back to the AP office. The massive concussion I received made the world spin like in a slow motion movie. Red tracers from large caliber machine gun fire arched over the Great Hall of The People. Buses were burning; the crackle of gunfire was heard throughout the city. People were screaming and even laughing. It was just insane and I was scared to death. When I managed to return to the AP office at the Diplomatic Compound, Photo editor Mark Avery said ‘Don’t go back out they are killing people’.[5]
Widener was assigned to cover the Tiananmen crackdown for the Associated Press on June 5, 1989.[5] He had brought camera equipment and film to the hotel where he later took the photo, but was at the risk of being denied entry by security personnel. He was helped inside by Kirk Martsen. Widener eventually ran out of film, so he asked Martsen to try and find some. Martsen found John Flitcroft, an Australian backpacker in the hotel lobby, and asked him if he had any spare rolls of film, explaining that Widener had run out of film. Flitcroft said he would give him the roll of film, if he could come up to the hotel room, which overlooked Tiananmen Square. It was this roll of film which Widener used to take the Tank Man photo. Martsen later borrowed Flitcroft's rented bicycle to deliver the film to the Associated Press office at the diplomatic compound.[12][11]
The "Tank Picture" circulated around the globe (except in China, where it is banned), and is now widely held to be one of the most recognized photos ever taken.[5][7][13] Because of that photo, he was nominated finalist for Pulitzer Prize in 1990.[14][3] In November 2016, Time included the photograph in "Time 100: The Most Influential Images of All Time".[13]
Awards
1980 – Photographer of the Year, Nevada State Press Photographer's Association[9]
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