50 Photo Icons, The Story Behind the Pictures

Hans-Michael Koetzle is a Munich-based freelance author and journalist, focusing mainly on history and the aesthetics of photography. He has published numerous books on photography, including Die Zeitschrift twen(1995), Photo Icons (2001), Das Lexikon der Fotografen (2002), and René Burri (2004).

50 Photo Icons, The Story Behind the Pictures (published by Taschen) is a resume of some of the most remarkable and unforgettable photographs of history.

“A picture is worth a thousand words” as the saying goes. Taschen‘s beautifully bound edition is a fascinating must read for photographers and photo enthusiasts. Filled with images of the “decisive moment” every photographer strives to capture, “50 Photo Icons. The Story Behind the Pictures“ not only provides a historical account behind the shot but also serves an inspirational and compelling addition to any photographer’s library.”

Photographs have a strange and powerful way of shaping the way we see the world and influencing our perceptions of reality. To demonstrate the unique and profound influence on culture and society that photographs have, Photo Icons puts the most important landmarks in the history of photography under the microscope.

Each chapter of this special edition focuses on a single image which is described and analyzed in detail, in aesthetic, historical, and artistic contexts. The book begins with the very first permanent images (Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre’s famous 1839 street scene) and takes the reader up through the present day, via the avant-garde photography of the 1920s and works such as Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother (1936), Robert Doisneau’s Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950), and Martin Parr’s ’New European photography.’