Iconic Photographs That Changed History

Some pictures do more than record an event. They shift public opinion, inspire new laws, change science or give people a fresh view of their own planet. The famous photographs in history gathered here come from different eras and corners of the world, and each one shows the remarkable power of a single frame. Learning the stories behind them helps us understand both history and the role photography plays in shaping it.

The photos are grouped by theme. Some of them show difficult moments, and they are described here with care rather than reproduced.

The Birth of Photography

• View from the Window at Le Gras (around 1826-1827). Taken by the French inventor Nicephore Niepce, this blurry view of rooftops from his window is widely considered the oldest surviving photograph made with a camera. The exposure is thought to have taken many hours, possibly days. It marked the very beginning of the medium.
• The Horse in Motion (1878). Eadweard Muybridge used a row of cameras triggered in sequence to photograph a galloping horse. The images proved that all four hooves leave the ground at once and laid groundwork for motion pictures.

Photographs That Drove Social Reform

• Jacob Riis and How the Other Half Lives (1890). Riis photographed overcrowded tenements in New York City and published them in his book. The images raised awareness of urban poverty and helped push for housing reform.
• Lewis Hine’s child labour photographs (early 1900s). Working for the National Child Labor Committee, Hine documented children working in mills, mines and factories across the United States. His pictures helped build public support for child labour laws.
• Migrant Mother (1936). Dorothea Lange photographed a mother and her children in a pea pickers’ camp in California during the Great Depression. The image became a symbol of the era and drew attention to the hardship faced by displaced farm workers.

War and Conflict

• Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima (1945). Associated Press photographer Joe Rosenthal captured US Marines raising a flag on Mount Suribachi on 23 February 1945. It won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography the same year and became one of the most reproduced images of the Second World War.
• V-J Day in Times Square (1945). Alfred Eisenstaedt’s photograph of a sailor kissing a woman in New York on 14 August 1945 captured the joy at the end of the war. In later years, discussion of the moment also prompted conversations about consent.
• The Terror of War (1972). Taken on 8 June 1972 during the Vietnam War, this image shows children, including nine-year-old Phan Thi Kim Phuc, fleeing a napalm attack. It won the Pulitzer Prize in 1973 and is credited with deepening public opposition to the war. The photo has long been credited to Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, although a 2025 documentary raised questions about its authorship that have been widely debated.

Moments of Courage and Protest

• Tank Man (1989). On 5 June 1989, a man stood in front of a column of tanks near Tiananmen Square in Beijing. Several photographers captured the scene from hotel balconies, including Jeff Widener of the Associated Press and Stuart Franklin of Magnum Photos. The man’s identity has never been confirmed, and the image became a worldwide symbol of individual courage.
• Alan Kurdi (2015). Turkish photographer Nilufer Demir photographed a three-year-old Syrian boy who drowned while his family tried to reach Europe. Published widely in September 2015, the image focused global attention on the refugee crisis and influenced public debate about asylum policy.

Science and Discovery

• The first medical X-ray of a hand (1895). Wilhelm Rontgen produced an X-ray image of his wife’s hand, showing her bones and wedding ring. It revealed a new way of seeing inside the human body and transformed medicine.
• Photo 51 (1952). This X-ray diffraction image of DNA was made in the laboratory of Rosalind Franklin, with her student Raymond Gosling. It provided key evidence for the double helix structure described in 1953.
• The first image of a black hole (2019). Released on 10 April 2019 by the Event Horizon Telescope collaboration, this image showed a glowing ring around the black hole at the centre of the galaxy M87. It combined data from radio telescopes around the world.

Our Planet From Space

• Earthrise (1968). On 24 December 1968, Apollo 8 astronaut William Anders photographed Earth rising above the Moon’s horizon. Many people credit the image with helping inspire the modern environmental movement.
• The Blue Marble (1972). Taken by the crew of Apollo 17 on 7 December 1972, this view of a fully lit Earth became one of the most widely shared images ever made.
• Pale Blue Dot (1990). On 14 February 1990, the Voyager 1 spacecraft looked back from about six billion kilometres away and photographed Earth as a tiny speck in a beam of scattered sunlight, a humbling view of our place in the universe.
• Pillars of Creation (1995). The Hubble Space Telescope captured towering columns of gas and dust in the Eagle Nebula, where new stars are forming. The image brought deep-space astronomy into homes and classrooms worldwide.

What Makes a Photograph Change History

Looking across these images, a few patterns stand out. Many arrived at a moment when the public was ready to pay attention. Many showed something that had never been seen before, from bones inside a hand to Earth from deep space. Others gave a human face to a large and abstract issue, making it impossible to ignore. Wide distribution through newspapers, magazines and later the internet turned single frames into shared global experiences.

Truth, Ethics and Iconic Images

Famous photographs also raise important questions. Some well-known images have faced debates about whether they were staged, cropped in misleading ways or correctly credited. Others show people at their most vulnerable, often without the chance to give consent. Over time, historians, journalists and the people pictured have added context that changes how these images are understood.

These debates are part of the story. They remind viewers to ask who took a photograph, why, and what lies outside the frame. In an age of easy editing and digitally generated images, those questions are more relevant than ever. Reputable news organisations follow strict guidelines on altering images, and checking a photograph’s source before sharing it is one of the simplest ways to protect the truth that great photography can reveal.

Tips for Exploring Historic Photographs

• Look up the full caption and context before sharing a historic image online.
• Visit museum and archive collections, many of which publish photographs and background information.
• Be respectful when viewing or sharing images of suffering, and consider the people shown.
• Compare how the same event was photographed by different people for a fuller picture.

Conclusion

The famous photographs in history remind us that a camera can be a tool for science, justice and wonder. Each of these images began as a single press of a shutter, yet together they changed how millions of people understood the world and their place in it.