Author: Peter Stepan

The temptation with list type books like this is to rifle through the contents and see how many you know, and then feel either smug or mildly ashamed depending on how well you do. To be sure, many of the big hitters are here – Steichen, Man Ray, Capa, Salgado etc. – but there are many that you probably haven’t heard of, despite the author’s somewhat finger-wagging suggestion that you should. I don’t mind admitting I’d never come across Malick Sidibé, from Mali, or Kaveh Golestan from Iran, for example. Some of the choices are curious especially when you consider the glaring omissions, such as Ansel Adams and Annie Leibovitz, but this is nevertheless an eclectic and quite international selection covering a broad spectrum of genres.