When did you realize that the picture you took of that man in front of the tank would become an iconic photo?
When I took the photo, I was actually angry that this guy, walking up to the tank with his two shopping bags. I thought: Oh no, this guy is gonna screw up my photo composition. I was sure he would be shot, so I kept my lens on him, but nothing happened. When I saw the photo for the first time after it was developed, I thought it was ok. It wasn’t that sharp. But when I came to the office the next day my editor came up to me and said: Jeff, you have received a couple of messages from New York. It was congratulation after congratulation from all over the world. Almost all the major papers in the UK had the photo on the front page. The president of AP congratulated me. I got a message from LIFE magazine, they also wanted to print it.
The photo opened a lot of doors for me over the years. But the realization, how iconic it really was, came years later. It must have been around the year 1999 when I browsed through some news sites. They had this section called ‘The Ten Most Memorable Photos of All Time’. And then there was mine among them. It hit me like a bolt of lightning. I had achieved something really great back then.
You have been in China just about two weeks before the situation between the protestors and the government became tense in the spring of 1989. How was the atmosphere on Tiananmen Square?
I went there every morning by sunrise and saw this sculpture of the goddess of democracy being constructed, facing the big Mao portrait! The atmosphere was happy, fantastic. It was well organized. People would line up to get food. They even had their own printing machine to update the people about what was happening on a daily basis. That was democracy, right there! I admired the courage of the students. But I also had the feeling that many of them didn’t understand the diplomacy that comes with democracy. There was a point where they had to back off. I mean, how much can you humiliate the Chinese government and the military? People even threw paint at the sacred portrait of Mao! It was just a matter of time until something would happen.
In my opinion, the student leaders should have sat down to come to a consensus of what they are going to do and what it was that they wanted to get out of this situation. There would have been a chance to regroup and do some serious diplomatic negotiations later. There was a lot of fighting and ego involved. Then the government overreacted.
How was it to be in the middle of all of this when it escalated?
I remember it vividly. I had to pull the first night shift for Associated Press. I went out riding my bicycle with my reporter Dan Biers. I told him that I had a bad feeling about it. It was around midnight at Tiananmen Square when I saw the protestors coming out of the shadows with steel barricades. They put it into the middle of the road to stop the advance of any military vehicle.
We got off the main road around the Great Hall Of The People. Then I heard people shouting and saw them running. There was the loud noise of the barricades being hit by something big and something fast. Then I saw an APC with mounted machine guns being chased by protestors. I am a white-knuckle war photographer, but at this moment I got scared to death.
What happened then?
I decided to go back to the office. I had some great pictures already and I had them exclusive. So I picked up a bike and started to paddle to the other end of Chang’an Avenue to the diplomatic compound where our office was located. I saw a burning armored car and wanted to take a photo. I am very competitive after all. The adrenaline was running. I didn’t think. Suddenly, someone grabbed my camera strap and pulled my neck. Then I saw a mob around me pulling my cameras. They didn’t look like students. I thought they would tear me to shreds. I grabbed my American passport and held it over my head and yelled: “American, American!”
Then a guy who was obviously some kind of leader came to me and pointed to a dead soldier that I haven’t seen next to the burning armored car. He said: ‘You take photo, you tell world’. I took a picture and then – boom – a chunk of concrete hit me right in the face. I was seeing stars just like in the cartoons. Then another guy jumped out of the car, holding his hands up to surrender. His uniform looked pristine, meanwhile you could see the horror on his face. Then the mob moved in on him. And I went back on my bicycle. It wasn’t easy to get out of there. I had to lift my bike all the time over barricades.
The famous ‘Tank Man’ photo was taken the next day. You had unexpected help from an exchange student…
The next day, when I went to the office, you could see all the debris and blood stains. The injury increased my fear factor. I felt vulnerable. Taking my bike and cycling back to Tiananmen took me to fight the biggest wall of fear I’ve ever imagined. I was heading to the Beijing Hotel because I knew I had a good overview from there. But I also knew there were secret police that used electric cattle prods on journalists who didn’t want to hand them their photo equipment. The lobby was dark, the lights were turned off.
But there was a kid, an American-looking guy. His name was Kirk, he was an exchange student. I walked up to him and pretended I knew him. I said, ‘Hey Joe, where have you been? I was looking for you.’ Then I whispered, I am from AP, can you let me into your room to take a picture?
He then took you to his balcony on the sixth floor.
He got me up on the roof and his balcony. I went to the edge and saw that the whole Tiananmen Square was full of tanks. I saw truckloads of soldiers passing by below and heard gunfire. Up there I noticed that I was running out of films. I asked Kirk if he could go down and try to find another film for me, because they knew he was a student, he was younger and had kinda long hair. And he really managed to get a film from a tourist.
Funnily, I got contacted by that tourist. He wrote me an email not long ago and said he didn’t want to give the film to Kirk. But Kirk was persistent. Later, he smuggled my films out of the hotel in his underwear.
So Kirk Martsen played a crucial role in the existence of the ‘Tank Man’ shot. Are you still in contact with him?
That’s a funny story. After what happened, we lost contact. I always wanted to thank him. One day I got an email from him, saying, hey Jeff, I don’t know if you remember me, I was the guy who smuggled your films out in my underpants. It blew my mind. We reconnected for a while. Planned to go on talk shows together.
Then he went back to China and started a business. And he completely cut our communication. He didn’t answer my emails anymore. The last thing I heard was that he became very successful. He didn’t want to upset the communists.
Have you ever had any problems with the Chinese government? Have they let you back into the country?
The government doesn’t like the photo for sure. But I actually never had a problem getting a visa in China. I am a journalist, that’s what I do. I am not a political activist, I am not calling for civil unrest. I have an opinion, yes, but I don’t pick up rocks to throw them at people. I believe journalism should be neutral and unbiased. I was in Beijing on an assignment back then. And I went back to China for work and for vacation. I even met my wife there in 2009, when the BBC shot an anniversary documentary.
On some occasions, I was followed. But I also remember a situation during the Olympics in Atlanta when a group of Chinese state journalists from Xinhua wanted to take pictures with me! They were going crazy when they found out it took that famous pic of the Tank Man. I think many have a love-hate relationship with that photo. The government tries to erase it. But I am sure this photo is going to be around for a long time. It’s part of history.
On 5 June 1989, Jeff Widener (66) captured a still unknown man standing in front of an approaching People’s Liberation Army tank during the Tiananmen Square protests for the Associated Press. Although other photographers also snapped the moment, Widener’s picture became a symbol of freedom and was nominated for the Pulitzer Prize in 1990. After a few years in Hamburg, the US photographer now lives in Mexico City with his German wife.
https://table.media/china/en/feature/tank-man-photographer-jeff-widener-debris-and-bloodstains/