The Photos of the Century: 100 Historic Moments

Buzz Aldrin in his bulky spacesuit stands by the American flag; to the left, the space capsule in which he and Neil Armstrong landed on the moon; behind him, the void. Everyone knows this picture; the reflection of an epoch-making moment, it made history in its own right. It records the fulfillment of one of mankind's greatest dreams: the first moon-landing, which overcame seemingly insurmountable barriers, achieving a reconnaissance of space in mid-cold war.... On the threshold of the new millennium, this book looks back at some of the greatest photos of the 20th century. For over three years, the renowned journalist Marie-Monique Robin researched the French TV series Les 100 Photos du Siècle (The 100 Photos of the Century). Traveling the world, often in hazardous conditions, she sought out the protagonists of each picture, tracked down the photographer and established the context. These celebrated images--Robert Capa's militiaman dying in the Spanish Civil War, the defiant head of Che Guevara, the East German policeman leaping over the nascent East Berlin Wall, or the Vietnamese girl fleeing towards the camera from the napalm--are photographic icons telling of hope, hubris, futility and death, individual acts and historic revolutions. In them, the great figures of the century live again, Mahatma Gandhi no less than Hitler, Stalin or Mao. These images document catastrophes that shook the world, from the explosion of the airship Hindenburg and the Hiroshima mushroom cloud to civil wars and single, shattering strokes of fate. A hundred pictures that moved the world: how they came about, and the influence they exerted. Their story offers an illustrated tribute to the century and a profound insight into the history of photography.