Frances B Johnston was commissioned in 1899-1900 to photograph the Hamptons Institute in Virginia, popular with African American and Indigenious students.

The photos were displayed at the Paris Centennial Exposition of 1900.

Godine, Boston- 1973

1815-1879

In 1864, the pioneering British photographer Julia Margaret Cameron wrote what is now a famous mission statement:

"My aspirations are to ennoble Photography and to secure for it the character and uses of High Art by combining the real & Ideal & sacrificing nothing of Truth by all possible devotion to poetry and beauty."

Cameron was among the foremost photographers of the 19th century, pushing the newly discovered technique towards becoming an art form with her portraits of people dressed as characters from Shakespeare or myth.

Introduced to photography by the astronomer Sir John Herschel (whom she would later photograph), she was able to pursue her visions in Victorian England despite a lot of opposition from people who thought photography wasn't necessarily ladylike. "From the first moment I handled my lens with a tender ardour," she wrote in her memoir, "and it has become to me as a living thing, with voice and memory and creative vigour.”

Martin Secker & Warburg Ltd- 1973

Holt, Rinehart and Winston - 1974

1979

1984

1985

1986

1987

Seventy-nine duotone photographs of remote Irish-speaking farming and sheepherding communities.

Giese began traveling to Ireland in the late 1970s, drawn to the light, the weather, and the history.

1991

The Clash survived the stereotypes of punk to become one of the world’s most successful acts of the 1980s. That heady period is captured in Pennie Smith’s raw photographs and the witty accompanying captions by members of the band. Smith’s moody monochrome images showcase dynamic stage performances and include many pictures from the 1979 breakthrough American tour. Smith’s camera also recorded the Clash’s downtime offstage, their comic antics and reflective moments.

2000

Virginia Oldoini (1837-1899)

The Countess of Castiglione, an aristocrat and mistress to Napoleon's nephew, showed her artistic self-expression with self- potraiture..

Instead, she was the muse of the court photographer Pierre-Louis Pierson, and the results were a catalogue of over 700 portraits of the Countess in delightful costumes or (gasp) revealing bare limbs, leading to her description in 2016 as "the mysterious selfie queen of Parisian society".

The Metropolitan Museum, however, notes that she was "far from being merely a passive subject — it was she who decided the expressive content of the images and assumed the art director’s role, even to the point of choosing the camera angle. She also gave precise directions on the enlargement and repainting of her images in order to transform the simple photographic documents into imaginary visions—taking up the paintbrush herself at times." The results are among the most beautiful and strange in photography's history.

2000