Friday, November 10, 2017

100 Photographs by Time Inc.

100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time Time Inc. Books, edited by Ben Goldberger and Geoff Dyer [779.1 One] 

Gandhi at his spinning wheel, Betty Grable’s legs, Che Guevara, the Hindenburg explosion, Neil Armstrong standing on the moon — these iconic photographs are collected in this companion book to the online project of the same name by TIME magazine. A panel of photo editors and historians selected a hundred photo images that encapsulate a person, an event, or a representation of time/place that are indelible in common consciousness. Some of the pictures are exceedingly well known, and a number are more obscure but still important. From the oldest extant photographic print, of rooftops in a French village, to the first cell-phone snapshot — of a newborn baby, of course! — or from Matthew Brady’s studio portrait of Senator Abe Lincoln to Nebraska native Harold Edgerton’s stop-motion milk drop, these are images that did and will resonate with the clarity, urgency, and permanence that photographs can contain. In a way, the book is as depressing as it is inspiring, due to the sheer number of war and atrocity inclusions, but from a documentarian’s perspective, it makes sense to include most of them. The book does not contain an index but, since each photo is accompanied by background information and ways in which it affected the course of history or culture, it is well worth poring over.

[ official 100 Photos web site ]

Recommended by Becky W.C.
Walt Branch Library

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