PHOTO ICONS

Photographs have a strange and powerful way of shaping the way we see theworld and influencing our perceptions of reality. To demonstrate theunique and profound influence on culture and society that photographshave, Photo Icons puts the most important landmarks in the history ofphotography under the microscope. Each chapter of this special edition focuses on a single image which isdescribed and analyzed in detail, in aesthetic, historical, and artisticcontexts. The book begins with the very first permanent images (NicéphoreNiépce's 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre'sfamous 1839 street scene) and takes the reader up through the present day,via the avant-garde photography of the 1920s and works such as DorotheaLange's Migrant Mother (1936), Robert Doisneau's Kiss in Front of CityHall (1950), and Martin Parr's 'New European photography.'