At the start, Tiananmen Square had the atmosphere of a festival. Most people couldn't see the hunger strikers – they saw the crowds marching with banners and music being played. Lots of things were surprising about the events in Tiananamen Square, even the demonstration itself. It's pretty rare in Chinese history for people to get together at the centre of a government square and defy the leadership.

I had arrived in Beijing in the last week of May 1989, working for Magnum on assignment for Time magazine. I got myself a bicycle to get around the city and was staying just off the square. It was relatively easy to work as a photographer back then, by today's standards. The political class weren't as sophisticated at handling the press, or realising the power that they had.

Goddess of Democracy statue, 30 May 1989. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

On 30 May, Chinese art students wheeled a huge statue out into the square that resembled the Statue of Liberty. It became a symbol of democracy and was described in New York, and by the press, as the "Goddess of Democracy". The Chinese were protesting for freedom of speech, freedom of the press and an end to corruption but they didn't know the rhetorical force of this figure, and how she would be used and seen as a powerful image all over the world.

After the statue was brought in, and once protesters had been camped out for weeks, the government realised they needed to act. Two days before the crackdown, the army arrived in bulk and the atmosphere changed radically. Within a few hours, truckloads of troops arrived from all different directions. At the time, no one really knew what was going on. In fact, there were even rumours of civil war across China.



I witnessed the troops moving into the square and clearing out the protesters on the night of 4 June. I left in the early hours of 5 June with Newsweek photographer Charlie Cole and we headed back to our hotel. After that point, we were totally confined. The military occupied the lobby and journalists were searched and stopped from working. I was on a balcony with a group of other photographers and journalists when we saw the man jump in front of the tank on 5 June. That image has now become so iconic – but what drove its impact was the fact that people had seen the man moving in front of the tanks on TV, as well as footage of the violent crackdown the night before. The still photographs that a few of us took of that 'tank man' scene seemed unremarkable to me, only because I was so far away on that balcony.

The majority of journalists were not there to witness the scene; lots had moved to another hotel and missed the 'tank man' moment. Most of them started at the Beijing Hotel, but the food wasn't great. Another place nearer the airport did hamburgers, so they had decamped and got stuck outside the city by blockades at the point of the crackdown.

As I was photographing the tank, I had very clear memories of the Prague spring of 1968, when citizens faced off with Russian tanks. The atmosphere soon became chaotic in the hotel, as people were worried about getting their stories out in the unfolding tragedy. Authorities inside the hotel confiscated footage, but I packed my film into a box of tea and gave it to a French student who was heading back to Paris. She got it to Magnum. It was really common then to stow our films with passengers travelling back on planes, because it was quicker than air freighting and less admin. You'd often sit in airports looking for people who would take your film.

Posters on lampposts showing images of victims of the massacre. Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos Photograph: Stuart Franklin/Magnum Photos

In the days that followed, it became clear that not many Chinese people had seen any footage or images of what had happened during the crackdown. Looking back at the set of pictures I took, this image of people gazing at a lamppost stands out. A picture had been pinned up of someone that had been killed. Throughout central Beijing, lampposts acted as the media for the Chinese public, because the press was so heavily controlled. Nobody really knew what had happened, so these lampposts became the Twitter of their day – it's really bizarre to see that now.

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

When I returned home, a lot of people were talking about the tank image – but the Sunday Times magazine ran with this picture of a guy with his arms raised in the air as their cover shot. Many other publications ran it as a more powerful, human image of what the demonstration and uprising meant for the Chinese people.

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.





