Stuart Franklin: how I photographed Tiananmen Square and ‘tank man’

Back in the day, as they say, Stuart Franklin was a member of the Photographers Workshop. We had darkrooms and studio for hire and were the photographic hub of Oxford. Any photographer who needed processing facilities and wanted to be part of the photographic family ended up at The Photographers Workshop. Stuart was a lovely man, the most famous of our clients but always happy to talk to anyone about photography. “As a photographer, the objective is to crystallise the emotion of an event and communicate that as effectively as possible. My pictures follow the different efforts I made to come to terms with the events as they were unfolding, to tell the story even as it was changing.”

In the Guardian Stuart talks about one of his most iconic images and tells the story of Tianamen Square

The ‘Tank Man’ stopping the column of T59 tanks on 5th June 1989. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

A student on hunger strike gestures in Tiananmen Square, 1989. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

The Magnum photographer tells his story of the 1989 protests, from peaceful demonstration to bloody crackdown, the iconic ‘tank man’ – and how hamburgers gave him his big break, read the full story here