Not only can a picture tell a thousand words, it can have an impact on society. Certain images- particularly war imagery – have the power to affect policy and change the way people think. These images are iconic.
Not only can a picture tell a thousand words, it can have an impact on society. Certain images- particularly war imagery – have the power to affect policy and change the way people think. These images are iconic.
50 Photo Icons highlights fifty such landmarks in the history of photography, chronologically starting with the very first permanent images (Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre’s famous 1839 street scene)and taking us through to the present day.
Some images are quite disturbing; I had to get up from the table and go and have a comforting cuppa tea when confronted with the children working underage in the cotton mills in America’s South – but they confronted a nation with the hard truth of what was going on. So too did the world famous image of the girl running from napalm in Vietnam, bringing the distant war into living rooms of America.
Other images are of beautiful people; from sexy fashion photos of models in clothes juxtaposed with their likenesses stark naked in high heels, through Robert Doisneau’s Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950), to Hollywood stars; Marilyn Monroe’s last sitting, and James Dean smoking in a rainy Times Square.
I particularly liked the pregnant German woman in unbuttoned jeans, which looks tame by today’s standards, but apparently was very confrontational in Germany when it was taken. That’s what makes this book so great; the stories behind history’s most extraordinary photographs make them come to life and give context that I never knew about them, in terrific detail.
It makes for compelling viewing, and even more fascinating reading.
50 Photo Icons by Hanz-Michael Koetzle is published by Taschen.
By Megan Robinson, 21 June 2011.
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