This is a selection of 90 of the most impactful photographs, that provide a map of the past 100 years, from the epic to the intimate, the heroic to the barbaric, that literally changed our world. Photographs of the Wright Brothers conquering the air; Martin Luther King making his "I have a Dream" speech in Washington; the massacre in Tiananmen Square, do more than report they have come to symbolise whole epochs and become part of the universal visual memory in a way that few works of painting have managed to do.
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Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
From the series that includes Paintings That Changed the World and Buildings That Changed the World comes Photos That Changed the World: The 20th Century. Editor Peter Stepan (Icons of Photography) has assembled such iconic shots as the execution of a Viet Cong officer in the street at point-blank range, a naked child running from a napalm attack outside of Saigon, one of the Kent State massacre's victims being mourned immediately after being murdered and Martin Luther King delivering the "I Have a Dream" speech. Less familiar will be the burning Reichstag four weeks after Hitler took power, the storming of the St. Petersburg's Winter Palace in October 1917 and an amazing color shot of the leaders of the recent Zapatista rebellion in Mexico. There are 30 color, 100 duotone and 20 b&w illustrations in all; most have a Western bent, but all are important moments in history, as emphasized in accompanying essays.
Copyright 2001 Cahners Business Information, Inc.
From Library Journal
DK. 2000. 1023p. photogs. index. ISBN 0-7894-6806-9. $50. PHOTOG Compiling photographs to convey a sense of time and place is not nearly as easy as some might think. Weighing in at ten pounds, America: A Celebration! could fool readers into thinking that it contained every photograph ever shot in America. Instead, it is Sandler's harvest of 19th- and 20th-century photos from the files of Getty Images, an enormous photo library. The ethic behind this bulk seems to be that more is more, and why show less if you can show it all? Though some 19th-century work begins the book, the 20th century quickly takes over. Photographs are clustered by decade. But within each chapter the assembly is random a little landscape here, some celebrities there, popular culture foibles sprinkled in, and a visual chaos throughout. Sandler (American Images) had his book blessed by a fine foreword by Walter Cronkite. But the author's enthusiasm turned into a jumble of pictures rather than a coherent historical portrait of America. Not recommended. LIFE magazine remained true to its purpose of giving readers/viewers their world in weekly visual nuggets since its own life began in 1936. It weathered television for six decades, finally ending as a monthly in May 2000. LIFE: Century of Change is a volume built on 723 photographs from the magazine's rich archives. Suffering lives appear next to riches in this book, so broad it is forced to be shallow, racing across the surface of a century with a well-aimed camera in hand. Less a tool for learning than a snapshot, this is a gift book to spark memories rather than an effort to open up the 20th century for review. Recommended as a book for browsing if budgets allow. In Photos That Changed the World, Stepan (Icons of Photography) gives us 105 images that had the lasting visual power to capture a moment that could be the image of an era held in the instant of a shutter's click for distribution to a generation. Many of the photographs collected around the theme of "changing the world" are familiar. Some were used as propaganda; all are useful as our tie to the events they depict. Sometimes their photographers are anonymous because of fear of reprisals, and many of the images were widely reproduced to build public opinion. The photos are well reproduced and gain from the explanations of time, place, and context included in the excellent short essays that accompany each. Recommended. David Bryant, New Canaan Lib., CT
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Copyright 2001 Reed Business Information, Inc.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The century of the photograph,
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This review is from: Photos That Changed the World (Hardcover)
The biggest criticism of this book may be that the title is misleading. There are a lot of great photographs here, but only about half-a-dozen that truly mobilized public opinion.That being said, this is the century of the photograph, or certainly the news photograph. And many of the iconic photographs of the century are here: planting the flag on Iwo Jima, Buzz Aldrin standing on the moon, the screaming student at Kent State. Other photographs are notable for what they depict: the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the AIDS quilt laid out on the Mall. Each photograph is accompanied by a commentary of varying substance and quality. Some discuss the technical aspects of the photograph, others the background, and others attempt to draw conclusions. The later photographs seem to inspire rather politically biased and arguable commentary, most notably the discussion of the famous Tiananmen Square photograph with an unarmed man halting four Chinese Army tanks. The commentary suggests that the photo depicts individual powerlessness against the "overpowering might" of a ruthless government. I always saw it as showing that an individual could stop tanks. That being said, this is a fascinating and extraordinary collection of photographs that depict key political events of this century. It's riveting browsing.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
It should be required "reading",
By
This review is from: Photos That Changed the World (Hardcover)
Some of the photo's are more mundane than riveting (like Marilyn Monroe's skirt billowing around her in Manhattan), but most are galvanizing moments of great importance, frozen in time.I disagree with the platitude that a picture is worth one thousand words. Many are not, but these are worth many more. The pictures speak for themselves, but are accompanied by a descent amount of text.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Obligatory for youth,
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This review is from: Photos That Changed the World (Paperback)
The value of this book is not only in photos, but maybe mainly in description of history that is behind the photo.I think this book should be in every family house, especially with children.
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