52 Influential Photographs

Today I share with you 52 of the photographs that shaped a technology, an art form, and the world.

Nicéphore Niépce - View from the Window at Le Gras (1827)

The earliest surviving photograph, with an exposure time between 8 and 20 hours!

Louis Daguerre - Boulevard du Temple (1838)

First photograph of a person.

James Clerk Maxwell - Tartan Ribbon (1861)

The very first color photograph.

Mathew Brady - Federal Dead on the Field of Battle of First Day (1863)

Brady’s photograph but the brutality of the U.S. Civil War to those at home.

Thomas Annan - Glasgow, Close No. 80, High Street (1868)

Annan’s shoot in Glasgow, commissioned by the Glasgow’s City Improvement Trust, was perhaps the first to document the urban poor.

The Daily Graphic - Steinway Hall (1873)

The first printed photo appeared in New York’s The Daily Graphic, depicting Manhattan’s Steinway Hall. Newspaper photos went on to win Pulitzer Prize journalism awards alongisde reportage.

Eadweard Muybridge - The Horse in Motion (1878)

Muybridge shot a horse in fast motion using 50 cameras, demonstrating that a horse’s hooves do all leave the ground while galloping, and more importantly laying the groundwork for motion pictures.

Unknown - First Flight (1903)

The Wright brothers realize the ancient human dream of flight.

Edward Steichen - The Pond - Moonlight (1904)

Among the first to use a new color process, autochrome. And haunting.

Edward S. Curtis - Red Hawk at an Oasis in the Badlands (1905)

The immigrating Europeans’ contemptuous view of Native Americans was met with the obvious dignity of this Oglala Sioux chief.

Lewis W. Hine - Breaker Boys (1910)

The National Child Labor Committe hired Hine to depict children working in mines, mills, and streets. His photographs swayed public opinion as statistics could not.

Eric Enstrom - Grace (1918)

This religious scene can be found in the homes of millions of Christians, reminding them of ritual prayer and simplicity.

Man Ray - Soralization (1929)

The dadaist and surrealist painter also experimented extensively with his camera.

Unknown - LynchingA racist mob took these men from a jail and hung them. The photo was as effective in disgusting many as bolstering white supremacy.

Christian Spurling - Loch Ness Monster (1934)

London’s Daily Mail hired M.A. Wetherell to shoot the famed monster. Finding nothing, he conspired with Spurling to concoct this famous image.

Unknown - The Nuremberg Rally (1934)

Propoganda photos like these certainly helped change the world, for the worse.

Dorothea Lange - Migrant Mother (1936)

A famous portrait of the Great Depression.

Robert Capa - Death of a Loyalist Soldier (1936)

This famous photograph, probably staged but supposedly depicting the death of a solider during the Spanish civil war, served to de-romance the notion of war.

Murray Becker - Hindenburg (1937)

Photos like this of the Hindenburg disaster shattered faith in Zeppelin travel.

20th Century Fox - Betty Grable (1942)

Grable’s million-dollar legs were the subject of the most-seen pinup sent to ease the suffering of American troups during World War II.

Ansel Adams - The Tetons - Snake River (1942)

Adams turned photography into an art, and inspired the preservation of natural wonders in the process.

Robert Capa - Omaha Beach (1944)

Taken alongside the first infantry during the Normany invasion. Later, the raw look of Capa’s photographs were explicity imitated by Speilberg in Saving Private Ryan.

Joe Rosenthal - Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945)

This iconic image of U.S.A. combat rainvigorated waning support to finish out the war.

Alfred Eisenstaedt - The Kiss (1945)

Pure joy as World War II ends.

Margaret Bourke-White - Gandhi at his Spinning Wheel (1946)

This portrait of a hero is now an icon for humility and nonviolence.

Philippe Halsman - Dalí Atomicus (1948)

Halsman’s famous photograph of a really surreal world.

Alberto Korda - Che Guevara (1960)

This iconic portrait of the Latin American revolutionary spread like wildfire as the quintessential poster.

Charles Moore - Birmingham (1963)

Moore’s photos of the open hostility against Martin Luther King Jr.’s nonviolent demonstrators rallied support for the blacks.

Abraham Zapruder - JFK Assassination (1963)

Frame 313 of the only footage of John F. Kennedy’s assassination shows the president’s head exploding.

Malcolm W. Browne - Burning Monk (1963)

Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death at a busy intersection in Saigon to protest the South Vietnamese president’s opression of Buddhism.

Lennart Nilsson - How Life Begins (1965)

An endoscope capture of a fetus that was reprinted widely by pro-life activists.

Eddie Adams - Execution of a Viet Cong Guerrilla (1968)

Adams’ Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph turned public opinion against the Vietnam war.

William Anders - Earthrise (1968)

Perhaps the most famous photograph ever taken: earth from behind the moon.

Neil Armstrong - Apollo 11 Moon Landing (1969)

Finally, a man walked on the moon, and another was in the reflection of his visor.

Don McCullin - Biafra (1969)

When war photographer Don McCullin saw the children of Biafra dying of hunger and the muscle-wasting disease kwashiorkor, he stopped photographing soldiers and convinced the world community to intervene with photos of children.

Duncan Cameron - Canadian Seal Hunt (1969)

Photos liked this one sparked public outrage. Many stopped buying fur and “seal-clubbing” became a metaphor for heartless evil.

Huynh Cong Ut - Napalm Strike (1972)

“Nick” Ut captured these South Vietnamese children being burned by Napalm. After taking the photo, Nick doused the naked Kim Phuc with water and took her to the hospital.

W. Eugene Smith - Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath (1972)

A Japanese girl suffers from mercury poisoning. The Chisso company was dumping waste into the water, and this photograph led to the company’s allocating funds for victims.

Unknown - Lenna (1972)

A cropped cover of Playboy became perhaps the most popular image used for testing image processing algorithims.

Stanley J. Forman - Fire on Marlborough Street (1975)

Forman climbed on a fire truck and cought these two falling from the burning building seconds before a fireman could reach them. The photo pushed states to require better fire safety codes.

Mike Wells - Uganda (1980)

A priest holds the hand of a starving child. Photos like this one moved the United Nations and others to send food to the starving Horn of Africa.

Steve McCurry - Afghan Girl (1984)

Sharbat Gula’s piercing gaze on the cover of National Geographic came to symbolize the plight of refugees around the world. Her identity was unknown until she was found again in 2002.

Stuart Franklin - Tiananmen Square (1989)

As millions demanded reform, a single young man refused to move in the face of the People’s Republic’s tanks.

German Press Agency - Oil-Contaminated Bird at the Coast of Alaska (1989)

When oil tanker Exxon Valdez ran aground Prince William Sound, crude oil killed millions of animals and destroyed natural habitats, and public outcry demanded new laws and billions in payment from Exxon.

Charles Porter - Oklahoma City (1995)

A fireman carries one victim from the wreckage of the federal building in Oklahoma City after the terrorist bomb killed 168 people.

NASA - Pillars of Creation (1995)

The Hubble Space Telescope’s most famous photo shows the Eagle Nebula and captivated a planet of stargazers.

Various - 2001 Terrorist Attacks (2001)

Terrorists attack the World Trade Center and other sites with airplanes, launching the recognition of a new kind of war on earth.

Andreas Gursky - 99 Cent II Diptychon (2001)

Perhaps surprisingly, this dense photograph of a supermarket is the most expensive photo ever sold, for $3,346,456 in a February 2007 Sotheby’s auction.

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