“Always Stayed With Me”: 56 People Shared Photos From Their Countries That Hit Hard

Photography is a simple transaction—light hits film or a sensor, and whatever fits inside the viewfinder becomes an image. But the result is rarely clinical. A great photo can knock the air out of you. One Reddit thread proved it: people were asked to post the “hardest” photographs from their countries, and the replies came through with images that truly lived up to the prompt. Here are some of the best.

Jan 13, 2026 0 0

“Always Stayed With Me”: 56 People Shared Photos From Their Countries That Hit Hard

Photography, if you want to be clinical about it, is a simple transaction: light hits film or a sensor, and whatever falls inside that small rectangle of a viewfinder becomes an image. But the result is rarely clinical. A good photograph can knock the air out of you.

One Reddit thread happened to be an unlikely place to see that in action: a user asked people to share the “hardest” photos from their countries, and the replies came through with exactly that. Take a look below and see which ones live up to the prompt.

#1 Kosovo

This one from the war showing a young mother marching to safety while breastfeeding her daughter. The picture is now a mosaic and the mother and daughter are alright :)

#2 Germany

Survivors of the concentration camp Buchenwald showing how they "lived" in the barracks.

#3 Canada

Wurm42: For anyone not familiar, this is Canadian athlete Terry Fox. After having his right leg amputated due to cancer, he started the "Marathon of Hope," trying to raise money for cancer research by running across Canada.
Terry started in St. Johns, Newfoundland, running the equivalent of a full marathon (26.2 miles) every day. He ran more than 2,400 miles (4,000 km) and reached Thunder Bay, Ontario before he had to stop.
Terry stopped because it turned out he'd been doing all the running after his cancer came back, and it had reached his lungs. He died nine months later.
He is an inspirational figure for Canadians and disabled people all over the world.

#4 Canada

Canuck the downtown Eastside crow. Stealing a knife from a crime scene.

#5 Ukraine

Kharkiv. 2014. Leninopad “Leninfalls.”

#6 Poland

Polish Women’s Strike 2020.

#7 Lithuania

Baltic Way, 1989 - peaceful protest of Baltic people against the USSR regime by creating a live human chain across the 3 Baltic countries. This exact picture should be taken in Lithuania.

#8 Iceland. This Is Fine

Quarkonium2925: Just another Tuesday in Iceland.

#9 Germany

An east German (GDR) soldier fleeing to Westberlin during the construction of the Berlin Wall in August 1961.

#10 Estonia

#11 Russia

This one is pretty cool.

#12 Hungary

I have many (including some from the 1956 revolution), but this is the one that still sticks with me.

Not Photoshop, it was the aftermath of the "red mud" disaster that happened in 2010. A faulty wall broke down, and a 2-meter-high wave of liquid bauxite residue (causing chemical burns) flooded the nearby village, [fatal to]10 people. There are many iconic photos from this incident as well, but this is probably my favorite.

#13 Chile

This photo after the 8.8 magnitude earthquake that happened in 2010 always stayed with me.

#14 Nepal

This is Singha Durbar (Lion's palace) that had most administrative centers of Nepal Government. It was burnt during GenZ protest last September.

#15 Poland

Professor Simona Kossak, Polish zoologist and ecologist, with her pet wild boar in her hut in the Białowieża Primeval Forest.

#16 Morocco

The last photo taken of a wild Barbary Lion. Taken in 1924.

#17 The United States Of America

Ruby Bridges, New Orleans, 1960.

Cacafuego: Pride is all Americans should feel, looking at this photo. Pride in tough-as-nails little Ruby and all of our fellow countrymen who stood up and claimed the freedom and equality we are promised. Forget about everything else for the moment. That's an American right there.

CrazeMase. In case anyone wants to know how recent this was, she is 71 now. She's still alive, she currently does political activism.

#18 Nigeria

#19 United Kingdom

Live Aid, 1985. Wembley stadium jam packed and roughly one in every three people worldwide watched it. One of the last great humanitarian projects almost every country contributed to and one of the last great events hosted in the UK.

#20 France

Sinking of the oil tanker Amoco Cadiz in 1978 off the coast of Brittany.

#21 The Netherlands

October 2025: Storm Benjamin hits the coast at Vlissingen, the Netherlands.

#22 United Kingdom

The Blitz.

#23 Poland

Photo after First heart transplant in Poland.

#24 Belgium

Belgium, 1927.
Einstein. Curie. Bohr. Planck. Heisenberg. Schrödinger. Dirac.
The greatest scientific gathering ever photographed.

#25 South Africa

27 April 1994 - our first democratic election where everyone has the right to vote. This is a line at the ballot box.

#26 Ireland

#27 Iceland

#28 Australia

blondzie: That’s the most Australia thing I’ve seen.

#29 Spain

Some of the thousands of volunteers that cleaned the Galician coast after the "Prestige" oil spill.

#30 Australia

Australian volunteer firefighter, Daniel Knox, during a controlled burn.

#31 Northern Ireland

#32 During The 2021 Protests. Colombia

During the 2021 protests.

#33 Australia

#34 Pakistan

K-2, Chogori casts its shadow over China.

#35 South Korea

During the June Democratic Struggle in 1987.

#36 India

#37 The United States Of America

Tornado of Beaver City, Nebraska (1989) by Merrilee Thomas, depicting their daughter Audra and a tornado.

#38 India

This was the start of India's space program -- the first sounding rocket being transported on a bicycle in 1963. And in 2023, we became the fourth country to get to the Moon.

#39 New Zealand

#40 Spain

#41 The United States Of America

#42 Scotland

Statue of kelpies, a Scottish mythical creature.

#43 India

#44 Finland

The president of Finland in the 1970s.

#45 Saudi Arabia

Fajr prayer in a shelter in eastern Saudi Arabia during the Gulf war.

#46 The United States Of America

It's the eruption of Mt. St. Helens. The photographer is Richard Lasher (I think!). It's a pretty famous photo in my state.

#47 Turkey

#48 Turkey

Destruction of earthquake photos.. City of Kahramanmaraş/Turkey.

#49 Venezuela

A heroic young man destroying a statue of the exdictator Hugo Chavez during the 2024 protests.

#50 United States Of America

Moon Landing.

jjtnd1: Winner winner. Maybe the hardest pic humanity has taken to date

#51 Canada

Sidney Crosby just after scoring the golden goal in 2010. Canada has so many war and forest fire photos that I feel like a positive photo is way harder.