Every month, my sister places an order with Books-A-Million, Barnes & Noble, Amazon or some other similar book place. She L-O-V-E-S to read and is constantly ordering books. Usually I will get a surprise book with her order. Most of the time it is books about photography, some kind of business tutorial or doggie stuff. This month it was “LIFE’s” commemorative book “100 Photographs THAT CHANGED THE WORLD”. It contains quite a few famous images from Art, Society, Science, Nature, as well as War & Peace.

Gordon Parks wrote a remarkable intro including this statement, “I have come to believe that no art form transforms human apathy quicker than photography. Having absorbed the message of a memorable photograph, the viewer’s sense of compassion and newfound wisdom come together like two lips touching.”

The book begins, appropriately, with an image of a “heliograph” or sun drawing from 1827. Nicephore Niepce took what is believed to be the world’s first photograph…WOW. If only he knew what his vision was bringing to the world.

In looking through the pages and reading all the captions, it was interesting to see how much photography has “not” changed. Yes, I said “not”. It seems that we still want to photograph the same things. We still want to document people, places, things, events, etc. We still want to use photographs to educate. We still want to use photos as powerful ways to express ourselves, our culture, our religion, our politics, our lifestyles, etc. We “photographers” today seem to be much like those in our past history and our passion for photography is the same. I think what has changed most about photography is the technology which we use to capture, edit and print our photos. I believe this is where our biggest differences lie. Our images, however, still seem to be a lot alike.

This book, “100 Photographs That Changed The World” is very interesting to me. Looking at all the photographs from years past, it makes me wonder…will I ever take a photograph that may change something in the world? I HOPE SO… 🙂