''Life: 100 Photographs that Changed The World'' is a book of photographs, that are believed to have pushed towards a change, accumulated by the editors of ''

Life Life is a quality that distinguishes matter that has biological processes, such as signaling and self-sustaining processes, from that which does not, and is defined by the capacity for growth, reaction to stimuli, metabolism, energy ...

'' in 2003.

History

The project began with an online question posted on ''

s website in 2003 and '' The Digital Journalist'': Can

photographs A photograph (also known as a photo, image, or picture) is an image created by light falling on a photosensitive surface, usually photographic film or an electronic image sensor, such as a CCD or a CMOS chip. Most photographs are now created ...

create the same historical effect as

literature Literature is any collection of Writing, written work, but it is also used more narrowly for writings specifically considered to be an art form, especially prose fiction, drama, and poetry. In recent centuries, the definition has expanded to ...

? The question remained on the website for visitors to openly answer to for several weeks. Most responses were in favor of the idea with the exception of a rebuttal from documentary photographer Joshua Haruni who said, "photographs can definitely inspire us, but the written word has the ability to spark the imagination to greater depths than any photograph, whose content is limited to what exists in the frame." ''

'' determined that "a collection of pictures that 'changed the world' is a thing worth contemplating, if only to arrive at some resolution about the influential nature of photography and whether it is limited, vast or in between." Pictures nominated by the public were reviewed by editors who then compiled 100 photographs that they felt portrayed technological photographic achievements, documented historic events and accomplishments or have achieved iconic cultural and, symbolic status. The book was edited by Robert Sullivan and picture editor Barbara Baker Burrows, and published by

Time, Inc. Time Inc. was an American worldwide mass media corporation founded on November 28, 1922, by Henry Luce and Briton Hadden and based in New York City. It owned and published over 100 magazine brands, including its namesake ''Time'', ''Sports Illu ...

Home Entertainment. An updated edition of the book was published August 9, 2011.

Sections

The work is divided into four major chapters and three accompanying subsections. The major quarters are: *The

Arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

(concentrating on photography's evolution throughout the 19th century and its later application to cultural exploitation); *

Society A society is a group of individuals involved in persistent social interaction, or a large social group sharing the same spatial or social territory, typically subject to the same political authority and dominant cultural expectations. Soc ...

(documenting images that captured moments that shifted public acquaintance with political, social, cultural and environmental issues); *

War War is an intense armed conflict between states, governments, societies, or paramilitary groups such as mercenaries, insurgents, and militias. It is generally characterized by extreme violence, destruction, and mortality, using regular o ...

(pivotal moments of conflict and associated violence); and *

Science Science is a systematic endeavor that builds and organizes knowledge in the form of testable explanations and predictions about the universe. Science may be as old as the human species, and some of the earliest archeological evidence ...

and

Nature Nature, in the broadest sense, is the physical world or universe. "Nature" can refer to the phenomena of the physical world, and also to life in general. The study of nature is a large, if not the only, part of science. Although humans are ...

(capturing technological triumphs, defeats and horrors). The three subsections are: *Photographic Art (early works of artists whose primary medium was photography); *Trick Photography (infamous scams perpetrated through photographs); and *Stop Action (photos that are in fact captures taken from

film A film also called a movie, motion picture, moving picture, picture, photoplay or (slang) flick is a work of visual art that simulates experiences and otherwise communicates ideas, stories, perceptions, feelings, beauty, or atmospher ...

Photographs

Some of the included photos are identified with larger events, such as H.S. Wong's 1937 photograph of a lone child crying at a demolished train station on "Bloody Saturday" as representative of the entire bombing of Shanghai. Other photographs are excerpts from larger historic collections, such as

Roger Fenton Roger Fenton (28 March 1819 – 8 August 1869) was a British photographer, noted as one of the first war photographers. Fenton was born into a Lancashire merchant family. After graduating from London with an Arts degree, he became interested i ...

's and Alexander Gardner's respective groundbreaking documentations of the

Crimean War The Crimean War, , was fought from October 1853 to February 1856 between Russia and an ultimately victorious alliance of the Ottoman Empire, France, the United Kingdom and Piedmont-Sardinia. Geopolitical causes of the war included the ...

and

American Civil War The American Civil War (April 12, 1861 – May 26, 1865; also known by Names of the American Civil War, other names) was a civil war in the United States. It was fought between the Union (American Civil War), Union ("the North") and t ...

. Margin notes document the circumstantial background of many photographs, as well as instances where the images have been accused of being staged.

Gallery

Some of the photos are depicted below. File:Bloody Saturday, Shanghai.jpg, '' Bloody Saturday'' – Battle of Shanghai File:Cavalry camp near Balaklava 1855.3a34625r.jpg, ''Cavalry camp near Balaklava'' –

File:Roger_Fenton_-_Shadow_of_the_Valley_of_Death.jpg, ''The Valley of the Shadow of Death'' – Siege of Sevastopol, Crimean War File:X-ray by Wilhelm Röntgen of Albert von Kölliker's hand - 18960123-01.jpg,

X-ray An X-ray, or, much less commonly, X-radiation, is a penetrating form of high-energy electromagnetic radiation. Most X-rays have a wavelength ranging from 10 picometers to 10 nanometers, corresponding to frequencies in the range 30&nb ...

Wilhelm Röntgen Wilhelm Conrad Röntgen (; ; 27 March 184510 February 1923) was a German mechanical engineer and physicist, who, on 8 November 1895, produced and detected electromagnetic radiation in a wavelength range known as X-rays or Röntgen rays, an achie ...

File:View from the Window at Le Gras, Joseph Nicéphore Niépce.jpg, ''

View from the Window at Le Gras ''View from the Window at Le Gras'' is a heliographic image and the oldest surviving camera photograph. It was created by French inventor Nicéphore Niépce in 1827 in Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France, and shows parts of the buildings and surroun ...

'' File:The Horse in Motion.jpg, ''

The Horse in Motion ''The Horse in Motion'' is a series of cabinet cards by Eadweard Muybridge, including six cards that each show a sequential series of six to twelve "automatic electro-photographs" depicting the movement of a horse. Muybridge shot the photogr ...

'' File:Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg, '' Migrant Mother'' File:NASA-Apollo8-Dec24-Earthrise.jpg , ''

Earthrise ''Earthrise'' is a photograph of Earth and some of the Moon's surface that was taken from lunar orbit by astronaut William Anders on December 24, 1968, during the Apollo 8 mission. Nature photographer Galen Rowell described it as "the most in ...

'', 1968, by William Anders

References

{{reflist

External links

A selection from ''100 Photographs That Changed the World''
at '' The Digital Journalist'' Photographic collections and books 2003 non-fiction books Life (magazine)