List of photographs considered the most important

Updated: 5/20/2026, 7:39:37 PM Wikipedia source

This is a list of photographs considered the most important in surveys where authoritative sources review the history of the medium not limited by time period, region, genre, topic, or other specific criteria. These images may be referred to as the most important, most iconic, or most influential—and are considered key images in the history of photography.

Tables

· 19th century › Before 1850

Image	Title	Date	Photographer	Location	Format	Notes	Cited survey(s)
	View from the Window at Le Gras (French: Point de vue du Gras)	1826	Nicéphore Niépce	Saint-Loup-de-Varennes, France	Bitumen-coated pewter plate	Considered the oldest surviving camera photograph.
	Windows from Inside South Gallery	August 1835	William Henry Fox Talbot	Lacock, England, United Kingdom	Photogenic drawing negative	The earliest surviving photographic negative and the earliest surviving paper photograph.
	The Artist’s Studio / Still Life with Plaster Casts	1837	Louis Daguerre	Paris, France	Daguerreotype	The earliest surviving photograph by Louis Daguerre, inventor of the daguerreotype.
	Boulevard du Temple	1838	Louis Daguerre	Paris, France	Daguerreotype	The earliest surviving photograph depicting people: a person working as a shoeshiner and an individual having his shoes shined.
	Self‐Portrait as a Drowned Man	18 October 1840	Hippolyte Bayard	Paris, France	Direct Positive	Possibly the earliest known staged photograph, created in protest to the French government's apparent neglect of the invention of his photographic process.
	The Haystack	1844	William Henry Fox Talbot	Lacock, England, United Kingdom	Calotype	A photograph that appeared in The Pencil of Nature, the first photographically illustrated book to be commercially published.

· 19th century › 1850s

Image	Title	Date	Photographer	Location	Format	Notes	Cited survey(s)
	The Mime Charles Deburau as Pierrot	1854	Nadar	Paris, France	Salt print	The photograph is part of a series taken during the 1850s.
	The Cook House of the 8th Hussars	April 1855	Roger Fenton	Crimea	Albumen print	Photograph of soldiers from the 8th Hussars gathered around an open air kitchen during the Crimean War.
	Valley of the Shadow of Death	23 April 1855	Roger Fenton	Sevastopol, Crimea	Wet collodion negative	Fenton's pictures during the Crimean War were one of the first cases of war photography, with Valley of the Shadow of Death considered "the most eloquent metaphor of warfare" by The Oxford Companion to the Photograph.
	Sergeant Dawson and his Daughter	1855	Unknown; attributed to John Jabez Edwin Mayall	Unknown	Salt print	Photograph of Sergeant Thomas Dawson who lost his left arm at the Battle of Inkerman. One of a series of Crimean War veteran portraits acquired by Queen Victoria, who later met Dawson amongst other injured men.
	The Brig	1856	Gustave Le Gray	Normandy, France	Albumen print	One of the most famous and widely distributed photographs of the 19th Century, potentially the first to achieve both commercial success and critical acclaim as fine art.
	Portrait of Nariakira Shimazu	17 September 1857	Shiro Ichiki	Satsuma Domain, Japan	Daguerreotype	Oldest daguerreotype by a Japanese author; first photo designated an Important Cultural Property by the government of Japan in 1999.
	Isambard Kingdom Brunel Standing Before the Launching Chains of the Great Eastern	November 1857	Robert Howlett	London, England	Glass plate	Landmark environmental portraiture and iconography of the Industrial Revolution and 19th century.
	Two Ways of Life	1857	Oscar Gustave Rejlander	Wolverhampton, England	Albumen print	One of the most controversial photographs of the 19th Century, with its composition and allegorical subject matter sparking debate about nudity, and photography as an artistic form rather than its existing factual nature.
	La Vallée de l'Huisne (River Scene)	1858	Camille Silvy	Nogent-le-Rotrou, France	Albumen print	Photographer Camille Silvy directed people to pose in specific places and retouched the negative with clouds, reflections and foliage. An example of photography's balance between reality and artifice.
	Fading Away	1858	Henry Peach Robinson	Warwickshire, England, United Kingdom	Albumen print	One of the most famous and controversial composite photographs of the Victorian era due its composite creation, and depiction of the death of a young girl. Made author Robinson the leader of the Pictoralist movement.

· 19th century › 1860s

Image	Title	Date	Photographer	Location	Format	Notes	Cited survey(s)
	Abraham Lincoln	27 February 1860	Mathew Brady	New York City, United States	Gelatin silver print	Taken shortly before Lincoln's Cooper Institute speech. Widely used in his campaign during the 1860 presidential election, both Brady's photo and the speech helped him become president.
	Guardian Angel, One Person Praying	c. 1860	Unknown	London, England, United Kingdom	Albumen print
	Boston, As the Eagle and the Wild Goose See It	13 October 1860	James Walice Black	Boston, Massachusetts, United States	Glass plate	Oldest extant aerial photograph.
	Cathedral Rock	1861	Carleton Watkins	Yosemite National Park, California, United States	Albumen print
	The Dead of Antietam	1862	Alexander Gardner	Antietam, Maryland, United States	Large-format glass plate	Showing the aftermath of the Battle of Antietam—the deadliest single day in the American Civil War
	The Scourged Back	c. 2 April 1863	McPherson & Oliver	Baton Rouge, Louisiana, United States	Albumen print	One of the most widely distributed photos of the abolitionist movement.
	Cartes de Visite	May - August 1863	Andre Adolphe Disderi	Paris, France	Albumen print
	The Home of a Rebel Sharpshooter, Gettysburg	July 1863	Alexander Gardner	Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, United States	Large-format glass plate
	Sarah Bernhardt	1864	Nadar	Paris, France	Glass plate
	Wanted Poster	20 April 1865	Unknown	United States	Unknown	Broadside advertising reward for capture of Lincoln assassination conspirators, illustrated with photographic prints of John H. Surratt, John Wilkes Booth, and David E. Herold.
	Execution of the Lincoln Conspirators at Washington Arsenal	7 July 1865	Alexander Gardner	Washington, D ., United States	Albumen print
	Portrait of Sir John Herschel	1867	Julia Margaret Cameron	Hawkhurst, England, United Kingdom	Carbon print	Herschel would later be the godfather to Cameron's firstborn.
	Call, I Follow, I Follow, Let Me Die!	1867	Julia Margaret Cameron	Hawkhurst, England, United Kingdom	Carbon print
	Close No. 193 High Street	1868	Thomas Annan	Glasgow, Scotland, United Kingdom	Photogravure
	East and West Shaking Hands at Laying Last Rail	10 May 1869	Andrew J. Russell	Promontory, Utah, United States	Glass plate	The ceremony for the driving of the golden spike at Promontory Summit, Utah, on May 10, 1869; completion of the First Transcontinental Railroad. Central Pacific Railroad (left), meets Union Pacific Railroad (right) and exchange bottles of water from the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans.

· 19th century › 1870s

Image	Title	Date	Photographer	Location	Format	Notes	Cited survey(s)
	Old Faithful	1870	William Henry Jackson	Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States	Mammoth-format plate
	Great Falls of the Yellowstone River	1871	William Henry Jackson	Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States	Albumen print
	Chicago Fire	October 1871	Unknown	Chicago, Illinois, United States	Unknown
	Ancient Ruins in the Canyon de Chelly	1873	Timothy O'Sullivan	Canyon de Chelly National Monument, Arizona, United States	Albumen print
	Steinway Hall	2 December 1873	Unknown	New York City, United States	Halftone print	Steinway Hall on East 14th Street, between University Place and Fifth Avenue in Manhattan. The first halftone print of a photo used in a periodical in the United States.
	Composite Portraits of Criminal Types	1877	Francis Galton	London, England, United Kingdom	Unknown
	The Horse in Motion	June 1878	Eadweard Muybridge	Palo Alto, California, United States	Composite from multiple glass plates	Series of cabinet cards regarded as a precursor to motion pictures. Pictured left is the variant Sallie Gardner at a Gallop, which further captured a horse's motion.

· 19th century › 1880s

Image	Title	Date	Photographer	Location	Format	Notes	Cited survey(s)
	Street Arabs in the Area of Mulberry Street	1880	Jacob Riis	New York City, United States	Gelatin silver print
	Water Rats	1886	Frank Meadow Sutcliffe	Whitby, England, United Kingdom	Albumen print
	Bandits' Roost, 59 1/2 Mulberry Street	1888	Jacob Riis	Mulberry Bend, New York City, United States	Gelatin silver print	Part of How the Other Half Lives, an early photojournalist publication pursuing better conditions for the lower class of New York City. The photo and publication's impact was such that they contributed to the crime-ridden Bend's replacement with Columbus Park.

References

Talbot's 1835 photograph has also been referred to as Lacock Oriel Window (Latticed Window) or simply Latticed Window.
Also known as Le Noyé (lit. 'The drowned man').
The Metropolitan Museum of Art dates their copy of Talbot's Haystack as "probably 1841". The National Gallery of Canada
View full collection of photographs at Wikimedia Commons.
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/Category:Photographs_of_Charles_Deburau_by_Nadar
If the photographer is Mayall, then the location would be London, England as he was present there at the time.
Gustave Le Grey's The Brig is also referred to as Brig on the Water and The Brig in Moonlight.
Robert Howlett's image is referred to as Isambard Kingdom Brunel before the Launch of the Leviathan in The Oxford Compan
Alexander Gardener's 1862 The Dead of Antietam is also referred to as Civil War Battlefield or Bodies on the battlefield
Also titled Cotton Mill Girl. The collection item for the Library of Congress gives a much longer title that includes co
Also titled Grand Prix of the Automobile Club de France, 1912 or Automobile Delage, Grand Prix de l'Automobile-Club de F
Also referred to as Abstraction, Porch Shadows, Connecticut and Abstraction, Shadows of a Veranda, Connecticut.
Also dated to 1913 and 1915.
Originally captioned "test".
Oxford Companion to the Photograph
https://www.oxfordreference.com/view/10.1093/acref/9780198662716.001.0001/acref-9780198662716-miscMatter-0009
Life
https://digitaljournalist.org/issue0309/lm_index.html
Time
https://web.archive.org/web/20200219213527/http://100photos.time.com/
Life
https://www.life.com/history/the-100-most-important-photos-ever/
The Atlantic
https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/2018/01/what-was-the-most-influential-photograph-in-history/546596/
CNN
https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/01/world/gallery/iconic-images/index.html
Esquire
https://www.esquire.com/news-politics/news/gmp2689/most-powerful-photos/