Hopefully

Me:

People remember a woman in the photo because there WAS a woman, in ANOTHER (and also iconic) photo from the same event.

It’s called The Ultimate Confrontation: The Flower and the Bayonet and it was taken by Marc Riboud.

Whereas the first one

is called Flower Power and it was taken by Bernie Boston.

“Which one people remember” depends on which people we’re talking about, exactly. In the history of photography, they are both considered LEGENDARY. For a broader audience, Riboud’s photograph with the woman (her name was  Jan Rose Kasmir, and she was 17 years old at the time) is generally more known, for the following mundane and boring reasons:

Visually, it’s a lot more striking and memorable. It’s got a narrow depth of field, intense bokeh and soft focus. The composition juxtaposes very clearly the two sides of the conflict, each covering a third of the image, with another third in the middle as “no man’s land”. You know the Rule of Thirds, yes? It’s just more pleasing to the eye. Put all that together, and it doesn’t just record what happened, it paints a picture. If it weren’t 100% real and candid, you’d accuse Riboud of being too fucking obvious and heavy-handed with the symbolism. But it was 100% real.

Riboud was a prominent member of Magnum Photos, an agency which at the time had SUPERB talent, was very well (and internationally) connected, and therefore got a lot of (absolutely deserved) press.

Personally, I prefer Boston’s photo, exactly because it’s more raw and less… symbolic. But that’s subjective, and among other things it depends on our exposure and experience. If you’d asked me when I was a teenager, I’d probably fawn over Riboud’s take.