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From some of the earliest photography, such as Nicéphore Niépce’s 1827 eight-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre’s famous 1838 street scene, through to Martin Parr, this is as much a history of the medium as a case-by-case analysis of its social, historical, and artistic impact. We take in experimental Surrealist shots of the 1920s and the gritty photorealism of the 1930s, including Dorothea Lange’s Migrant Mother.

We witness the power-makers (Che Guevara) and the heartbreakers (Marilyn Monroe) as well as the great gamut of human emotions and experiences to which photography bears such vivid witness: from the euphoric Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950) by Doisneau to the horror of Nick Ut’s Napalm Against Civilians showing nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phúc running naked toward the camera from South Vietnamese napalm.