The Woman with the Handbag

Frozen in the middle of a spring day in Växjö, Sweden, this black and white photograph shows a slight woman swinging her handbag straight at a marching neo-Nazi. The date was April 13, 1985, and the woman was Danuta Danielsson, whose mother had survived a concentration camp. When the Nordic Reich Party paraded through her town, she did not stay in the crowd. She stepped forward and let her purse fly. Photographer Hans Runesson happened to be standing nearby, and his shutter clicked at the exact instant the bag met its target.

The picture is raw and completely unplanned, which is why it hits so hard. Danielsson leans her whole body into the swing, her coat and skirt caught mid-motion, while a flag waves overhead and the marchers keep striding past in their heavy boots. Nobody arranged this scene, and it shows. That messy honesty helped turn the photo into one of Sweden's best known protest images, and it later won a major press award. Even now, people debate whether Danielsson deserves a statue, a discussion that keeps her small act of defiance alive long after the moment passed.