Iconic photos of bloody history re-imagined as ghostly illustrations with subjects removed

de bene esse: literally, of well-being, morally acceptable but subject to future validation or exception

Photoshop is typically used to erase what the photographer doesn’t want you to see, but Pavel Maria Smejkal has used it on a series of some of the most iconic photos from history.
According to the Czech-born photographer we know these images so well that even with the key context – the people – missing we still recognize them because over the years they have become so embedded in our minds.
The project is called Fatescapes, and Smejkal has described it as a 'journey through the history of photography by important tragic moments.’

Smejkal has removed the protester and military tanks from this 1989 image of Tiananmen Square in Beijing

A Beijing citizen stands in front of tanks on the Avenue of Eternal Peace in this iconic 1989 photo taken during the crushing of the Tiananmen Square uprising

Iwo Jima: The photographer has removed the six Marines planting their flag on Mount Suribachi in 1945

Joe Rosenthal iconic image won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography in 1945 and is possibly the most reproduced photograph of all time

‘I remove the central motifs from historical documentary photographs,’ Smejkal explains on his website.
‘I use images that have become our cultural heritage, that constitute memory of nations, serve as symbols or tools of propaganda and exemplify a specific approach to photography as a document of the historical moment.’

 

By doing so he asks questions about photography as a documentary medium, about our memories and about history.
Several examples of his work - Vietnam, Beijing, Iwo Jima, Pearl Harbor, Gettysburg, Crimea - are shown below along with the original, more immediately iconic, images.

Smejkal has removed the children and soldiers from the iconic photograph taken during the Vietnam War in 1972

South Vietnamese forces follow after terrified children, including 9-year-old Kim Phuc, center, as they run down Route 1 near Trang Bang after an aerial napalm attack on suspected Viet Cong hiding places

The Zeppelin has been removed from this famous photo taken at Lakehurst Naval Air Station in New Jersey in 1937

Thirty-six people died when the Zeppelin LZ 129 Hindenburg caught fire during the historical airship accident

The cannonballs have been removed from this version of Roger Fenton's famous 'Shadow of the Valley of Death' taken during the Crimean War in 1855

It remains a source of debate if Fenton had deliberately placed the cannonballs there to enhance the image or if soldiers were gathering them up for reuse

The exploding USS Shaw has been removed from this 1941 photo of Pearl Harbor

A navy photographer snapped this photograph of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in Hawaii on December 7, 1941, just as the USS Shaw exploded

The body of a rebel sharpshooter has been removed from this famous 1863 photo at Gettysburg during the Civil War

This photo of a rebel sharpshooter at Gettysburg was taken July 5, 1863. on Nov. 19 that same year the photographer again visited this spot and found that the corpse had not been discovered by the burial squad