Photography's Last Century

Significant and iconic photographs created over the last 100 years provide an essential history and new interpretation of the medium.

Beginning with Paul Strand’s landmark From the Viaduct in 1916 and continuing through the present day, Photography’s Last Century examines defining moments in the history of the medium. Featuring nearly 100 masterworks, it includes both rare and iconic examples of works by photography’s most renowned and influential artists, including Diane Arbus, Richard Avedon, Walker Evans, László Moholy-Nagy, Man Ray, and Cindy Sherman, as well as a diverse group of lesser-known practitioners who helped define photography in the 20th and early 21st centuries.

Jeff Rosenheim’s detailed and perceptive text addresses the avant-garde artists of the early decades of the 20th century, the changing role of the camera after the Second World War, the rise of the international market for fine photographic prints in the 1960s, the photography boom in the late 1970s, and the implications of calling this period the “last” century of photography. Exquisitely designed and produced, this book offers new insight on the development and significance of photography as an art form over the course of the past 100 years.

Published by The Metropolitan Museum of Art/Distributed by Yale University Press

Exhibition Schedule:

The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York
(March 10–June 28, 2020)