Jeff Widener

Jeff Widener (born August 11, 1956) is an American photographer, 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, although he did not win.

Through the years, he has covered assignments in over 100 countries involving civil unrest and wars to social issues.

He was the first photojournalist to file digital images from the South Pole.

In 1974 he received the Kodak Scholastic National Photography Scholarship, beating out 8,000 students from across the United States.

The prize included a study tour of East Africa.

In 1978, Widener started as a newspaper photographer in California and later in Nevada and Indiana.

At age 25, he accepted a position in Brussels, Belgium as a staff photographer with United Press International.

His first foreign assignment was the Solidarity riots in Poland.

Widener was present in Beijing at the height of the Tiananmen Square protests, and described his experience in an interview with CBSN.

In response to a question on when the protests started to become violent, Widener recalls a scene on the night of 3 June:

"Interviewer: Could you, if you would, describe to us how those events unfolded 30 years ago? When did things take a turn and start to become violent?

Widener: Oh, wow, I would say that was on the night

of June 3rd.

I was with another AP reporter and we were riding our bicycles

to, you know, just check out the scene,

because it was relatively quiet, but

things started getting heated when a burning armored car came down the street

and people were throwing rocks, and I was

attacked, [...] my camera was smashed, the lens was

ripped off, it was bleeding everywhere,

and I was just knocked silly, and finally

once I got my head together, I went back

to the AP office to bring the rolls of film, and the camera was so damaged they

had to pry the film open [...]

Interviewer: Did you witness from

where you were up there at that vantage

point, did you witness some of the worst

violence?

Widener: Well what I saw wasn't pretty, okay.

There's a dead soldier on the ground

where the burning armor car was, [...]

another soldier came out to surrender and the mob moved in on him

and started beating him with clubs and

sticks, and I don't think he made it.

I was attacked and somehow talked my way out of it and managed to get back to the AP office."

In 1987, he was hired as Associated Press Picture Editor for Southeast Asia where he covered major stories in the region from the Gulf War to the Olympics.

Other assignments included East Timor, Afghanistan, Cambodia, Burma, Syria, Jordan, India, Laos, Vietnam, Pakistan and many more.

Widener is now based in Mexico City.

Widener grew up in Southern California where he attended Reseda High School, Los Angeles Pierce College and Moorpark College majoring in photojournalism.

Widener was tasked to capture the scene of the Tiananmen crackdown on June 5, 1989.