The Most Iconic Images Of The 90s

In August 1991, hardliners in the Communist Party demanded the removal of Soviet President Mikhail Gorbachev, who wanted to sign a treaty that would lead to the disintegration of the Soviet Union. They did this by placing him under house arrest and reinstating censorship. However, they were met by mass civil resistance–particularly in Moscow. Even with the aid of the KGB, the feared secret police, hardliners couldn’t win support and their coup toppled in three days. Two AP photographers, Olga Shalygin and Alexander Zemlianichenko, snapped this iconic image of Moscow civilians destroying the large, reviled statue of feared KGB founder, Feliks Edmundovich Dzerzhinsky. It won the Pulitzer Prize for AP the next year and became of symbol of the beginning of the end of the Soviet Union.

The Pulitzer Prize winning photo by Kevin Carter depicts a vulture stalking a starving, dying child, probably awaiting its death. It was a horrific image that brought home the plight of Sudanese children as well as plenty of criticism toward Carter for taking the photo instead of helping the child.

After a 27-year jail sentence for his revolutionary part in the anti-apartheid movement in Africa, Nelson Mandela was finally freed in 1991. This iconic image shows the jubilant Mandela being release after his wrongful incarceration.

Operation Desert Storm, a.k.a the Gulf War, was the war waged by the UN-authorized coalition forces, led by the US, against the Iraqi invasion of Kuwait. The war marked a change in the way news was delivered, as events were broadcast live from the front lines straight to the homes of US civilians. It was nicknamed the Video Game War for this reason.