In November 2016 TIME magazine published 100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time, a list chosen with curators, historians and photo editors from around the world. It is not a ranking of the most beautiful pictures. The editors looked for images that changed something: photographs that were the first of their kind, that shifted how people thought about a war or an injustice, or that changed how we live.
The list stretches from a blurry rooftop seen from a French window in the 1820s to a celebrity selfie taken on a phone in 2014. Along the way it includes the Moon landing, the Vietnam War, the civil rights movement, Tiananmen Square and the refugee crisis of 2015, as well as artworks that asked hard questions about what a photograph is.
Below, all 100 photographs are arranged in the order they were taken rather than in TIME's numbering, so you can watch photography grow from a scientific curiosity into the language the whole world speaks. Each caption explains who made the picture, what it shows and why it mattered. Some of these images are graphic and distressing, because the events they record were.
1826–1899: Learning to fix light
The first photographs were slow and fragile, but they quickly proved their value as records of war, nature, science and poverty.
View From the Window at Le Gras — Joseph Nicéphore Niépce, c. 1826
This blurry rooftop view from Niépce's country house in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes is the oldest surviving photograph made with a camera. He coated a pewter plate with bitumen and left it in the camera for hours, possibly days, until light hardened the image. The plate is now kept at the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas at Austin.
Boulevard du Temple — Louis Daguerre, 1838
Daguerre's view of a busy Paris street looks empty, because the long exposure erased anything that moved. The exception is a man standing still to have his boots polished, which makes him the first person known to appear in a photograph. TIME dates the plate to 1839, the year the daguerreotype was announced; most historians place the exposure in 1838.
The Valley of the Shadow of Death — Roger Fenton, 1855
Sent to cover the Crimean War, Fenton was expected to reassure the British public, so he showed few bodies. This empty road strewn with cannonballs became the war's most haunting image anyway. He made two versions, one with the balls on the road and one without, and filmmaker Errol Morris later concluded that the empty-road version came first, suggesting the scene was arranged.
Abraham Lincoln — Mathew Brady, 1860
Brady photographed the lanky Illinois lawyer on 27 February 1860, the day of his Cooper Union speech in New York. Brady posed him to look statesmanlike and touched up the print to soften his features. Copies spread through newspapers and campaign material, and Lincoln is often said to have credited the speech and the portrait with helping him win the presidency.
Cathedral Rock, Yosemite — Carleton Watkins, 1861
Watkins hauled a huge custom camera and glass plates about 18 by 22 inches into Yosemite Valley by mule. His crisp, monumental landscapes reached lawmakers in Washington, and they are widely credited with helping persuade Congress to pass the Yosemite Grant, which Lincoln signed in 1864. It was the first time the US government set aside wild land for public enjoyment.
The Dead of Antietam — Alexander Gardner, 1862
The battle of Antietam on 17 September 1862 remains the bloodiest single day in American history. Gardner, working for Mathew Brady's studio, photographed the bodies before burial, and Brady exhibited the prints in his New York gallery that October. For the first time, civilians far from the front could see what the war was doing to their sons.
The Horse in Motion — Eadweard Muybridge, 1878
Former California governor Leland Stanford wanted to know whether all four hooves of a trotting or galloping horse ever leave the ground at once. Muybridge lined up a dozen cameras triggered in quick succession and, in June 1878, showed that they do, with the legs tucked under the body rather than stretched out as painters had shown them. His sequences pointed the way to motion pictures.
Bandit's Roost, Mulberry Street — Jacob Riis, c. 1888
Riis, a police reporter who had once been a poor immigrant himself, used newly invented magnesium flash powder to light the alleys and rooms of Manhattan's Lower East Side. Pictures like this one illustrated his 1890 book How the Other Half Lives. The book shocked middle-class readers and fed the tenement reforms backed by Theodore Roosevelt, then New York's police commissioner.
The Hand of Mrs. Wilhelm Röntgen — Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen, 1895
Weeks after discovering a mysterious new kind of ray in his laboratory, Röntgen placed his wife Anna Bertha's hand in its path on 22 December 1895. The result showed her bones and wedding ring. Within months doctors around the world were using X-rays to find bullets and broken bones, and Röntgen received the first Nobel Prize in Physics in 1901.
1900–1939: The camera as witness and art
Lighter cameras and picture magazines turned photography into both a fine art and a force for social reform.
Moonlight: The Pond — Edward Steichen, 1904
Steichen built up this moody scene on Long Island by layering light-sensitive gum and pigment, so each of the three known prints is slightly different. It shows how early art photographers, known as Pictorialists, tried to make photographs look like paintings. In 2006 one print sold for about $2.9 million, then a record for a photograph.
The Vanishing Race — Edward S. Curtis, 1904
Curtis spent some three decades photographing Native American communities for his 20-volume project The North American Indian. This image of Navajo riders heading into shadow expressed the belief, common at the time, that Native cultures were disappearing. Historians now note that Curtis sometimes staged scenes and removed signs of modern life, yet his archive remains an important record.
The Steerage — Alfred Stieglitz, 1907
Travelling to Europe in first class, Stieglitz looked down at the crowded lower decks and saw a composition of shapes: a gangway, a funnel, hats and shawls. He later called it one of his most important pictures. Published in his magazine Camera Work in 1911, it helped move photography from soft-focus imitation of painting toward modern, sharply seen art.
Cotton Mill Girl — Lewis Hine, 1908
Hine, a teacher turned investigator for the National Child Labor Committee, often talked his way into factories by posing as a salesman or inspector. This girl, identified as Sadie Pfeifer, was working the spinning machines at a mill in Lancaster, South Carolina. Hine's thousands of photographs helped build public support for child labour laws, culminating in the federal Fair Labor Standards Act of 1938.
Blind — Paul Strand, 1916
Strand photographed this New York street peddler without her knowledge, using a camera fitted with a false lens so he could point it away from his subject. The hand-lettered sign and the woman's unseeing eyes make an unsentimental portrait of poverty. Published in Camera Work in 1917, it became a landmark of candid street photography.
Bricklayer — August Sander, 1928
Sander set out to catalogue the people of Germany by profession and class, from farmers to artists. This labourer balancing a load of bricks on his shoulders is dignified and plainly described. The Nazis disliked Sander's honest portraits of ordinary Germans and destroyed the printing plates of his 1929 book Face of Our Time.
The Hague — Erich Salomon, 1930
Salomon slipped into diplomatic meetings with a small, quiet camera and photographed statesmen unguarded, often late at night. Here French foreign minister Aristide Briand points straight at him, reportedly calling him the king of the indiscreet. Salomon, who was Jewish, was murdered at Auschwitz in 1944; his candid style shaped modern political photojournalism.
Lunch Atop a Skyscraper — photographer unknown, 1932
Eleven ironworkers eat lunch on a steel beam high above Manhattan during construction of the RCA Building at Rockefeller Center. The shot, published on 2 October 1932, was a publicity picture and the men were posed, though they really were working at that height. The photographer has never been confirmed: Charles Ebbets, Thomas Kelley and William Leftwich were all on the beam that day.
Behind the Gare Saint-Lazare — Henri Cartier-Bresson, 1932
Cartier-Bresson poked his Leica through a gap in a fence behind a Paris station and caught a man in mid-air above a flooded yard, his heel about to touch his own reflection. The picture became the classic example of what was later called the decisive moment: the instant when timing and form come together. He co-founded the Magnum agency in 1947.
Couple in Raccoon Coats — James VanDerZee, 1932
VanDerZee ran a successful studio in Harlem and photographed the neighbourhood's weddings, churches and stylish residents for decades. This well-dressed couple in matching fur coats beside a Cadillac shows a confident Black middle class that rarely appeared in mainstream media. His work reached a wide audience after the Metropolitan Museum's 1969 exhibition Harlem on My Mind.
Hitler at a Nazi Party Rally — Heinrich Hoffmann, 1934
Hoffmann was Hitler's personal photographer and controlled almost every image of him that Germans saw. Rally pictures like this one present the dictator as a commanding figure before massed crowds, part of a propaganda system that helped build his cult of personality. Hoffmann grew rich from the business and was later convicted as a profiteer of the Nazi regime.
The Loch Ness Monster — attributed to Robert Kenneth Wilson, 1934
Known as the Surgeon's Photograph, this picture of a long neck rising from the Scottish loch made the monster world famous. In 1994 researchers revealed it was a hoax: a model head and neck mounted on a toy submarine, set up by Marmaduke Wetherell's family and passed off through a respectable London doctor. It is a lasting lesson about how readily people believe photographs.
Migrant Mother — Dorothea Lange, 1936
Working for the US Resettlement Administration, Lange stopped at a pea pickers' camp in Nipomo, California, and made a few exposures of Florence Owens Thompson and her children. Published in a San Francisco newspaper, the pictures prompted the government to send food to the camp. The image became the defining face of the Great Depression, though Thompson herself was only identified in the 1970s.
The Falling Soldier — Robert Capa, 1936
Capa's picture of a Republican militiaman collapsing at the instant of being shot made him famous during the Spanish Civil War. Its authenticity has long been debated: researchers have argued that it was taken near Espejo rather than at the battle once claimed, and possibly during a staged exercise. Either way, it set a template for dramatic combat photography.
Fort Peck Dam — Margaret Bourke-White, 1936
This view of the massive concrete spillway of a New Deal dam in Montana was the cover of the first issue of LIFE magazine, published on 23 November 1936. Inside, Bourke-White's photo essay focused on the rough boomtowns that grew up around the project. LIFE went on to define the picture magazine and the photo essay for decades.
The Hindenburg Disaster — Sam Shere, 1937
On 6 May 1937 the German passenger airship Hindenburg caught fire while landing at Lakehurst, New Jersey, and was destroyed in about half a minute; 36 people died. Shere was one of several photographers waiting for a routine arrival and caught the moment of the explosion. The images, along with a radio report, ended public confidence in airship travel.
Bloody Saturday — H.S. "Newsreel" Wong, 1937
After Japanese planes bombed Shanghai's South Railway Station on 28 August 1937, Wong found a baby crying alone in the wreckage. Published in LIFE and in newspapers worldwide, the picture turned much Western opinion against Japan's invasion of China. Japanese officials claimed it had been staged, a charge that has never been proved.
1940–1949: War, victory and its aftermath
The Second World War produced some of the most widely seen images ever made, as well as many that were staged or censored.
Winston Churchill — Yousuf Karsh, 1941
Karsh had only a couple of minutes with Britain's wartime prime minister after his speech to the Canadian Parliament in Ottawa on 30 December 1941. He plucked the cigar from Churchill's mouth, and the scowl that followed became the image of British defiance. It is one of the most reproduced portraits ever made.
American Gothic — Gordon Parks, 1942
Newly arrived in Washington on a government photography fellowship, Parks faced racism in shops and restaurants. He posed Ella Watson, a cleaner in a federal building, with a mop and broom in front of the American flag, echoing Grant Wood's famous painting. Parks went on to become LIFE's first Black staff photographer and a film director.
Grief — Dmitri Baltermants, 1942
In January 1942 Baltermants photographed women searching a muddy field near Kerch in Crimea for relatives murdered by German forces, who had shot thousands of civilians there, many of them Jewish. Soviet censors held back many such images during the war. Shown more widely in the 1960s, it became one of the great Soviet images of loss.
Betty Grable — Frank Powolny, 1943
A studio photographer at 20th Century Fox shot the actress in a swimsuit, looking back over her shoulder. The picture became the most requested pin-up of the Second World War, carried by millions of American servicemen. It helped turn Grable into one of the highest-paid stars in Hollywood.
Jewish Boy Surrenders in Warsaw — photographer unknown, 1943
This boy with his hands raised appears in the report SS general Jürgen Stroop compiled for Heinrich Himmler on the crushing of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The Nazis meant the album as a record of achievement. It was later used as evidence at the Nuremberg trials, and the boy, whose identity has never been confirmed, became a symbol of the Holocaust's children.
The Critic — Weegee, 1943
Arthur Fellig, better known as Weegee, made his name photographing crime scenes at night in New York. At the opening of the Metropolitan Opera season he caught two bejewelled society women passing a dishevelled onlooker. Weegee's assistant had reportedly brought the woman there, so the contrast was arranged, but it remains a sharp comment on wealth during wartime.
D-Day — Robert Capa, 1944
Capa landed with American troops on Omaha Beach on 6 June 1944 and photographed under fire. Only a handful of his frames survived, and their blur and grain make the chaos of the landing feel immediate. The long-told story that a London darkroom accident ruined the rest has been questioned by researchers, but the surviving images still define how we picture that morning.
Flag Raising on Iwo Jima — Joe Rosenthal, 1945
Rosenthal's photo of Marines raising a flag on Mount Suribachi on 23 February 1945 actually shows the second flag raising of the day. It won the Pulitzer Prize and became the model for the Marine Corps War Memorial. The Marine Corps has since corrected two of the men's identities, in 2016 and 2019, after historians re-examined the photos.
Raising a Flag Over the Reichstag — Yevgeny Khaldei, 1945
Khaldei restaged this victory scene in Berlin on 2 May 1945, after the fighting for the Reichstag had ended. The negative was later retouched: smoke was added for drama, and a second wristwatch on one soldier, which hinted at looting, was removed. It became the defining Soviet image of the defeat of Nazi Germany.
Mushroom Cloud Over Nagasaki — Charles Levy, 1945
On 9 August 1945 Lieutenant Charles Levy photographed the cloud rising over Nagasaki from an aircraft flying alongside the bomber. The explosion killed tens of thousands of people at once, with many more dying of injuries and radiation in the months that followed. Together with the Hiroshima attack three days earlier, it ended the war and opened the nuclear age.
V-J Day in Times Square — Alfred Eisenstaedt, 1945
As news of Japan's surrender spread on 14 August 1945, Eisenstaedt photographed a sailor kissing a woman in white in Times Square. LIFE published it as a picture of national joy. Decades later the most widely accepted identities are George Mendonsa and Greta Zimmer Friedman, a stranger to him, and the image is now also discussed as an unwanted kiss.
Gandhi and the Spinning Wheel — Margaret Bourke-White, 1946
Photographing Gandhi for LIFE, Bourke-White was reportedly told she had to learn to spin before she could see him. The image of the spinning wheel in the foreground, a symbol of his campaign for Indian self-reliance, became a tribute after his assassination in January 1948. It remains one of the best-known portraits of the independence leader.
Dalí Atomicus — Philippe Halsman, 1948
Before digital editing, Halsman threw water and cats into the air while Salvador Dalí leapt, then printed the best of many attempts, reportedly 28. Assistants held the easel and chair with wires, which were retouched out. The picture shows how photography could capture a surreal idea in a single instant.
The Babe Bows Out — Nat Fein, 1948
Babe Ruth, dying of cancer, appeared at Yankee Stadium on 13 June 1948 for the 25th anniversary of the ballpark. Fein moved behind him and photographed the frail legend from the back, his famous number 3 visible. Ruth died two months later, and the picture won the 1949 Pulitzer Prize.
Country Doctor — W. Eugene Smith, 1948
Smith spent weeks with Dr Ernest Ceriani, the only doctor for a large area around Kremmling, Colorado. The resulting LIFE essay showed his long days and exhaustion through a series of intimate pictures. It set a standard for the extended photo essay that followed one person's life closely.
1950–1969: Civil rights, Cold War and the Moon
Television arrived, but still photographs remained the images people remembered from these decades of change.
Camelot — Hy Peskin, 1953
Shot for LIFE at Hyannis Port, this picture of the young senator John F. Kennedy and his fiancée Jacqueline Bouvier sailing helped build the glamorous image that would follow him into the White House. It ran on LIFE's cover in July 1953. Kennedy was one of the first politicians to understand the power of carefully made photographs.
Emmett Till — David Jackson, 1955
Fourteen-year-old Emmett Till was abducted and murdered in Mississippi in August 1955 after being accused of whistling at a white woman. His mother, Mamie Till-Mobley, insisted on an open casket so the world could see what had been done, and Jet magazine published Jackson's photos. The images energised the civil rights movement; Rosa Parks later said she thought of Emmett when she refused to give up her seat.
Dovima With Elephants — Richard Avedon, 1955
Avedon photographed the model Dovima at the Cirque d'Hiver in Paris in a Dior evening gown, the first Yves Saint Laurent designed for the house. Pairing haute couture with chained circus elephants made a striking contrast of grace and weight. It changed fashion photography from stiff studio poses to dramatic, story-driven pictures.
Trolley, New Orleans — Robert Frank, 1955
Funded by a Guggenheim fellowship, Swiss-born Frank drove across the United States and shot more than 27,000 frames. This trolley, with white passengers in front and Black passengers at the back, quietly shows segregation in the South. It opened the US edition of his book The Americans, a raw portrait of the country that influenced generations of photographers.
Milk Drop Coronet — Harold Edgerton, 1957
Edgerton, an MIT engineer, developed stroboscopic flash that could freeze events too fast for the eye. His photos of a milk drop splashing into a crown shape turned a laboratory technique into art. High-speed photography went on to be used everywhere from ballistics to sport.
Guerrillero Heroico — Alberto Korda, 1960
Korda photographed Che Guevara for only a few seconds at a memorial in Havana on 5 March 1960. The picture went largely unused until after Guevara's death in 1967, when posters made from it spread across the world. Korda never earned royalties from the image, which became one of the most reproduced in history.
Case Study House No. 22 — Julius Shulman, 1960
This night view of Pierre Koenig's glass-walled Stahl House shows two women chatting in a room that seems to float above Los Angeles. Shulman's architectural photographs made modernist homes look desirable and helped define the image of mid-century California living. The house still stands and is open for tours.
Leap Into Freedom — Peter Leibing, 1961
Three days after East Germany sealed off West Berlin, 19-year-old border guard Conrad Schumann jumped over a coil of barbed wire on Bernauer Strasse on 15 August 1961. Leibing timed his shot to catch Schumann in mid-air. The photo became the West's favourite symbol of the Berlin Wall.
The Burning Monk — Malcolm Browne, 1963
On 11 June 1963 the Buddhist monk Thich Quang Duc set himself alight at a Saigon intersection to protest the South Vietnamese government's treatment of Buddhists. Browne, of the Associated Press, was one of the few Western journalists present. The image shocked readers worldwide and increased pressure on the Diem regime, which was overthrown that November.
Nuit de Noël — Malick Sidibé, 1963
Sidibé documented Bamako's young people in the years after Mali's independence in 1960, at parties, beaches and dances. This couple dancing on Christmas Eve shows a joyful, modern West Africa rarely seen abroad at the time. Sidibé later received the Golden Lion for lifetime achievement at the Venice Biennale.
JFK Assassination, Frame 313 — Abraham Zapruder, 1963
Abraham Zapruder, a Dallas dressmaker, was filming President Kennedy's motorcade in Dallas on 22 November 1963 with a home movie camera. Frame 313 records the fatal shot. LIFE bought the film and printed selected frames, but the moving footage was not shown on national television until 1975.
Birmingham, Alabama — Charles Moore, 1963
In May 1963 Birmingham police and firefighters turned dogs and high-pressure hoses on young civil rights marchers. Moore's photographs for LIFE brought the brutality into American homes. They added pressure for federal action and the Civil Rights Act of 1964.
The Pillow Fight — Harry Benson, 1964
In January 1964, in a Paris hotel suite, the Beatles learned that I Want to Hold Your Hand had reached No. 1 in the United States. Benson suggested a pillow fight to celebrate. The playful picture captured the band on the eve of their first American visit and of Beatlemania.
Fetus, 18 Weeks — Lennart Nilsson, 1965
LIFE's cover story The Drama of Life Before Birth in April 1965 showed images of human development in astonishing detail. Most were of embryos and fetuses removed from the womb, carefully lit, though a few were made with an endoscope. The pictures changed how the public imagined pregnancy and were later used by many sides of the abortion debate.
Muhammad Ali vs. Sonny Liston — Neil Leifer, 1965
In the first round of their rematch in Lewiston, Maine, on 25 May 1965, Ali knocked Liston down with a punch many spectators did not see. Leifer, shooting for Sports Illustrated from ringside, caught Ali standing over his opponent and shouting at him. It is often called the greatest sports photograph ever taken.
Chairman Mao Swims in the Yangtze — photographer unknown, 1966
In July 1966 Chinese state media announced that the 72-year-old Mao Zedong had swum in the Yangtze near Wuhan, covering an implausible distance at record speed. The photos were meant to prove his vigour as he launched the Cultural Revolution. It shows how authoritarian governments use images to project strength.
Saigon Execution — Eddie Adams, 1968
On 1 February 1968, during the Tet Offensive, South Vietnamese police chief Nguyen Ngoc Loan shot a Viet Cong prisoner, Nguyen Van Lem, in a Saigon street. Adams's photograph won the Pulitzer Prize and became a symbol of the war's brutality. Adams later said he regretted how it defined Loan, and he apologised to the general's family.
Black Power Salute — John Dominis, 1968
At the Mexico City Olympics on 16 October 1968, American sprinters Tommie Smith and John Carlos raised gloved fists on the 200-metre podium to protest racism. Australian silver medallist Peter Norman wore a human rights badge in solidarity. Smith and Carlos were sent home, and the image became one of the most powerful protests in sport.
Invasion of Prague — Josef Koudelka, 1968
When Warsaw Pact troops invaded Czechoslovakia in August 1968, Koudelka photographed the confrontations in Prague's streets. His film was smuggled to the West and published under the initials P.P., for Prague Photographer, to protect him. He was publicly credited only in 1984.
Earthrise — William Anders, NASA, 1968
On 24 December 1968, orbiting the Moon on Apollo 8, astronaut Bill Anders photographed Earth rising over the lunar horizon. The picture showed the planet as small, fragile and alone. It is often credited with helping inspire the modern environmental movement, including the first Earth Day in 1970.
Albino Boy, Biafra — Don McCullin, 1969
During the Nigerian Civil War, a blockade of the breakaway region of Biafra caused famine that killed hundreds of thousands of people, by many estimates more than a million. McCullin photographed this starving albino boy holding an empty tin. Images like it forced the crisis onto front pages and drove humanitarian campaigns.
A Man on the Moon — Neil Armstrong, NASA, 1969
On 20 July 1969 Armstrong photographed Buzz Aldrin on the Moon; Armstrong himself is reflected in Aldrin's visor. Because Armstrong carried the camera for most of the moonwalk, there are very few good still photos of the first man on the Moon. It remains the defining image of the Apollo program.
1970–1989: Protest, revolution and new ways of seeing
News photographs kept shaping politics, while artists began to question what a photograph is and who owns it.
Kent State Shootings — John Paul Filo, 1970
On 4 May 1970 Ohio National Guard troops fired on students protesting the US invasion of Cambodia, killing four. Filo, a journalism student, photographed 14-year-old Mary Ann Vecchio kneeling and crying out over the body of Jeffrey Miller. The image won the Pulitzer Prize and deepened opposition to the Vietnam War.
Windblown Jackie — Ron Galella, 1971
Galella followed Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis for years and caught this smiling, candid moment in New York in October 1971. He called it his favourite photograph. His relentless pursuit led to a court order to keep his distance, and the picture is a reminder of how the paparazzi age began.
The Terror of War — credited to Nick Ut, 1972
On 8 June 1972 a South Vietnamese plane dropped napalm near Trang Bang, and nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc ran down the road, badly burned. The photographer took her to hospital, and she survived to become a campaigner for peace. The image won the 1973 Pulitzer Prize and helped turn opinion against the war. In 2025 World Press Photo suspended its credit to Ut after a documentary named a Vietnamese freelancer; the AP's own investigation kept the credit (see the note at the end).
Munich Massacre — Kurt Strumpf, 1972
During the Munich Olympics, members of the Palestinian group Black September took Israeli team members hostage; eleven Israelis were killed. Strumpf's picture of a hooded gunman on a balcony of the athletes' village became the face of the attack. It marked the moment terrorism entered live global media.
Allende's Last Stand — Luis Orlando Lagos, 1973
On 11 September 1973, as the Chilean military attacked the presidential palace in Santiago, President Salvador Allende appeared in a helmet with armed guards. He died that day as General Pinochet seized power. The photograph was published without the photographer's name for decades, and Lagos was only credited much later.
Fire Escape Collapse — Stanley Forman, 1975
In Boston on 22 July 1975, a fire escape gave way as 19-year-old Diana Bryant and her two-year-old goddaughter Tiare Jones waited for rescue. Forman photographed their fall; Bryant died, and the child survived. The images won the Pulitzer Prize and led to tougher fire escape safety laws.
Soweto Uprising — Sam Nzima, 1976
On 16 June 1976, police in Soweto opened fire on students protesting against being taught in Afrikaans. Nzima photographed Mbuyisa Makhubo carrying the dying Hector Pieterson, aged 12, with Hector's sister Antoinette running alongside. The image turned world attention on apartheid, and 16 June is now South Africa's Youth Day.
Boat of No Smiles — Eddie Adams, 1977
In 1977 Adams photographed Vietnamese refugees aboard a small boat that had been turned away from Thailand. His pictures and testimony were shown to members of the US Congress. They helped persuade the government to admit large numbers of Vietnamese boat people, and Adams said he would rather be remembered for this work than for Saigon Execution.
Untitled Film Still #21 — Cindy Sherman, 1978
Sherman cast herself as a series of female characters in imagined scenes from films that never existed. Here she plays a young woman in the city. The series questioned how women are portrayed in movies and media, and the Museum of Modern Art acquired the full set in 1995.
Brian Ridley and Lyle Heeter — Robert Mapplethorpe, 1979
Mapplethorpe photographed this leather-clad couple in their apartment with a formal elegance usually reserved for society portraits. When a touring retrospective of his work reached Cincinnati in 1990, the gallery and its director were charged with obscenity and then acquitted. The case became a landmark in arguments over art, censorship and public funding.
Firing Squad in Iran — Jahangir Razmi, 1979
Months after the Iranian revolution, Razmi photographed a firing squad executing Kurdish prisoners in August 1979. Published in the newspaper Ettela'at without his name, the image won a Pulitzer Prize anonymously in 1980. Razmi was only publicly identified as the photographer in 2006.
Molotov Man — Susan Meiselas, 1979
Meiselas photographed Sandinista fighter Pablo Araúz throwing a petrol bomb in Estelí, Nicaragua, on 16 July 1979, the day before dictator Anastasio Somoza fled. The image became a symbol of the revolution on murals and stamps. Later reuse of it by artists also made it a case study in debates about copyright and context.
Behind Closed Doors — Donna Ferrato, 1982
While photographing a couple for a project on another subject, Ferrato witnessed the husband beating his wife and kept shooting. Magazines refused to publish the pictures for years. Her 1991 book Living With the Enemy helped bring domestic violence into public debate.
Androgyny (6 Men + 6 Women) — Nancy Burson, 1982
Burson used early computer software to blend the faces of six men and six women into a single composite. The result questioned how we read gender in a face. Her work led to age-progression technology that has been used to search for missing children.
Michael Jordan — Co Rentmeester, 1984
Shooting for LIFE before the Los Angeles Olympics, Rentmeester posed the young Jordan leaping toward a hoop with his legs spread like a ballet dancer. Nike later restaged the pose, which became the basis for its Jumpman logo. Rentmeester sued over the logo, but US courts ruled in Nike's favour.
Immersion (Piss Christ) — Andres Serrano, 1987
Serrano photographed a plastic crucifix submerged in a glass of his own urine, producing a glowing, red-gold image. When critics learned that public arts money had indirectly supported him, it set off a fierce debate in Congress about funding for the arts. The work has been vandalised in exhibitions since.
Untitled (Cowboy) — Richard Prince, 1989
Prince rephotographed Marlboro cigarette advertisements, cropped out the text and presented them as his own art. The method raised questions about authorship and originality. In 2005 a print of this image became the first photograph to sell for more than $1 million at auction.
Tank Man — Jeff Widener, 1989
On 5 June 1989, the day after troops cleared Tiananmen Square in Beijing, a lone man stood in front of a column of tanks. Widener photographed him from a hotel balcony; several other photographers also caught the scene. The man's identity and fate are still unknown, and the image remains censored in China.
1990–2015: From film to the phone in your pocket
Digital cameras and smartphones made everyone a photographer, and images began to spread around the world in minutes.
The Face of AIDS — Therese Frare, 1990
Frare photographed AIDS activist David Kirby on his deathbed in Ohio, surrounded by his family. Published in LIFE, it showed the human face of the epidemic at a time of fear and stigma. A colourised version was later used in a controversial Benetton advertising campaign, with the family's consent.
Demi Moore — Annie Leibovitz, 1991
Leibovitz photographed the actress nude and seven months pregnant for the cover of Vanity Fair in August 1991. Some shops refused to sell the issue. The cover helped change attitudes toward pregnancy and the body, and it has been copied by celebrities ever since.
Bosnia — Ron Haviv, 1992
At the start of the Bosnian war in 1992, Haviv photographed a Serb paramilitary fighter kicking a dying woman in Bijeljina. He smuggled the film out despite the risk. The images became evidence of the ethnic cleansing that followed.
Famine in Somalia — James Nachtwey, 1992
Civil war and drought left Somalia in famine in 1992. Nachtwey's photographs of starving people were published widely, including in The New York Times Magazine. They helped push international aid and the US-led relief mission that began later that year.
Starving Child and Vulture — Kevin Carter, 1993
In March 1993 Carter photographed a collapsed child in southern Sudan with a vulture nearby. When The New York Times published it, readers asked what had happened to the child; the family later said the boy survived the famine. Carter won the Pulitzer Prize in 1994 but struggled with what he had seen, and he died that July.
Pillars of Creation — NASA, 1995
The Hubble Space Telescope captured these towering columns of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, where new stars are forming. The 1995 image made Hubble famous after early problems with its mirror. In 2022 the James Webb Space Telescope photographed the same pillars in infrared.
First Cell-Phone Picture — Philippe Kahn, 1997
On 11 June 1997, while his wife was in labour in a California hospital, Kahn connected a digital camera to his mobile phone and shared a picture of his newborn daughter, Sophie, with friends and family. The improvised system led to camera phones and the instant photo-sharing culture of today.
99 Cent — Andreas Gursky, 1999
Gursky photographed the aisles of a discount store in Los Angeles and enhanced the image digitally so that every shelf is in perfect focus. The effect is a dizzying view of consumer culture. His large prints have sold for millions of dollars.
Surfing Hippos — Michael Nichols, 2000
Nichols photographed hippos in the Atlantic surf in Gabon during biologist J. Michael Fay's long trek through central African forests for National Geographic. The images showed a region few people knew. Gabon later created a network of national parks covering 11 percent of its land.
Falling Man — Richard Drew, 2001
Drew photographed a man falling from the North Tower of the World Trade Center on the morning of 11 September 2001. Newspapers printed it once and then largely stopped, after some readers objected. The man's identity has never been confirmed, and the image is still the subject of debate.
The Hooded Man — Ivan Frederick, 2003
A US Army sergeant took this picture of a hooded prisoner standing on a box with wires attached to his hands at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq. Published in 2004, it revealed the abuse of detainees by American soldiers. The scandal led to courts-martial and damaged US standing worldwide.
Coffin Ban — Tami Silicio, 2004
Silicio, a civilian cargo worker in Kuwait, photographed flag-draped coffins of US soldiers being loaded onto a plane. The US government had banned such images since 1991. The Seattle Times published the picture, she was fired, and the ban was lifted in 2009.
Iraqi Girl at Checkpoint — Chris Hondros, 2005
In Tal Afar in January 2005, US soldiers fired on a car approaching a checkpoint at night, killing the parents of five-year-old Samar Hassan. Hondros photographed her crying, spattered with their blood. Hondros was killed in Libya in 2011.
Gorilla in the Congo — Brent Stirton, 2007
Stirton photographed rangers and villagers carrying the body of a silverback mountain gorilla killed in Virunga National Park. The killings were linked to the illegal charcoal trade. The images helped bring international attention to the protection of endangered gorillas.
The Death of Neda — bystander video, 2009
On 20 June 2009, during protests after Iran's disputed presidential election, 26-year-old Neda Agha-Soltan was shot in Tehran. Video of her death, recorded on a phone, spread online within hours. A still from it became the symbol of the protest movement and of the power of citizen journalism.
The Situation Room — Pete Souza, 2011
On 1 May 2011 White House photographer Pete Souza captured President Obama and his team watching the raid on Osama bin Laden's compound. Hillary Clinton holds her hand over her mouth. The picture became one of the most viewed images ever released by the White House.
North Korea — David Guttenfelder, 2013
When North Korea allowed foreigners to use mobile internet in 2013, Guttenfelder, then AP's chief photographer in Asia, began posting everyday pictures to Instagram. Images like this gave the world rare unfiltered glimpses of daily life there. They showed how social media could open up closed societies.
Oscars Selfie — Bradley Cooper, 2014
At the Oscars ceremony in March 2014, host Ellen DeGeneres gathered a group of stars, and Bradley Cooper held the phone. DeGeneres posted the selfie on Twitter, where it became the most retweeted post up to that time, with more than three million retweets. It showed how quickly a single image can now reach the whole world.
Alan Kurdi — Nilüfer Demir, 2015
On 2 September 2015 Demir photographed the body of two-year-old Syrian refugee Alan Kurdi on a beach near Bodrum, Turkey, after his family's boat capsized. The image went around the world within hours. Donations to refugee charities rose sharply, and several European governments came under pressure to accept more refugees.
What makes a photograph influential
Looking at the list in order of time, a few patterns stand out. Many of the photographs mattered because they reached a huge audience at the right moment: LIFE magazine in the 1930s to 1960s, newspapers and wire services in the decades after, and social media in the 2010s. A picture that nobody sees cannot change anything.
Many others mattered because they showed something people had not been allowed or able to see before, such as the bones inside a living hand, the bodies at Antietam, children at work in mills, or the coffins of soldiers coming home. Several, including the Iwo Jima and Reichstag flags, the Loch Ness monster and Dalí Atomicus, were staged or altered, which is a reminder that photographs have always been made, not simply taken.
The list also raises fair questions. It is heavily weighted toward American and European photographers, and it includes images of people at the worst moments of their lives, often published without their consent. Knowing the stories behind the pictures, including the disputes, is part of looking at them responsibly.
A note on The Terror of War
For half a century the photograph of Phan Thi Kim Phuc was credited to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut. In May 2025 World Press Photo suspended that credit after the documentary The Stringer argued that a Vietnamese freelancer, Nguyen Thanh Nghe, took the picture. The AP published its own 96-page investigation, said it had found no definitive evidence to change the credit, and kept Ut's name on the image; Ut has rejected the claim. The question remains open.
Sources: TIME, 100 Photographs: The Most Influential Images of All Time (2016); Bored Panda, which first shared this selection; AP via KRDO, 19 May 2025: World Press Photo suspends attribution of the Napalm Girl image; Military Times, 17 October 2019: another Marine misidentified in the Iwo Jima photo. Photographs are credited to the photographers named in each heading.
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