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 focuses on a single image which is described and analyzed in detail, in aesthetic, historical, and artistic contexts.

Volume I begins with the very first permanent images (Nicephore Niepce's 1827 8-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre's famous 1839 street scene) and takes the reader up through the avant-garde photography of the 1920s.

Volume II explores works such as Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (1936) and Robert Doisneau's Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950), up through Martin Parr's 'New European photography.'