© Public Domain

Joseph Karsh (1908–2002) - Acknowledged as one of the greatest portrait photographers of the 20th century, the Armenian-Canadian photographer captured the personality of many notable individuals. (Photo: Wikimedia/CC BY 2.0)

© Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Joseph Karsh - Known professionally as "Karsh of Ottawa," his 1941 photograph of Winston Churchill brought him worldwide prominence.

© Public Domain

Ansel Adams (1902–1984) - An American photographer and environmentalist, Adams remains one of the great pioneers of landscape photography, and is especially known for his black and white images of the American West.

© Public Domain

Ansel Adams - Technically brilliant, he co-developed a precise system of image-making called the Zone System to produce stunning work like 'Evening, McDonald Lake, Glacier National Park' (1942).

© Public Domain

Dorothea Lange (1895–1965) - Distinguished by her Depression-era wok for the Farm Security Administration, Dorothea Lange was one of the foremost documentary photographers of her generation.

© Public Domain

Dorothea Lange - One of the American photographer's most iconic images is 'Migrant Mother' (1936).

© Public Domain

Robert Capa (1913–1954) - Regarded by many as the world's greatest combat photographer, the Hungarian photojournalist covered five wars, including the Spanish Civil War, WWII, and the 1948 Arab-Israeli conflict.

© Public Domain

Robert Capa - This image shows a woman, with her baby whose father is German, and her mother jeered at and humiliated by crowds in Chartres after having their heads shaved as punishment for collaborating with German troops.

© Getty Images

Alfred Stieglitz (1864–1946) - Besides working as a photographer, Stieglitz, an American citizen, was an enthusiastic promoter of modern art. He was instrumental in introducing many avant-garde European artists to the United States.

© Public Domain

Alfred Stieglitz - An early photographic success was this award-winning image, 'The Last Joke, Bellagio' (1887).

© Public Domain

Edward Weston (1886–1958) - Cited by many photographic historians as one of the masters of 20th-century photography, Western focused on people and places of the American West before expanding his range of subjects to include still lives, genre scenes, and nudes.

© Public Domain

Edward Weston - 'Pepper No 30' (1930)—a solitary green pepper in rich black and white tones—is one of his best-known photographs. (Photo: Wikimedia/Fair use)

© Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Walker Evans (1903–1975) - Another American photojournalist celebrated for his work for the Farm Security Administration during the Great Depression, Evans was also a writer and held down a position at Time magazine.

© Public Domain

Walker Evans - This image, 'Roadside stand near Birmingham, Alabama,' is typical of the Depression-era photographs Evans is known for.

© Public Domain

Man Ray (1890–1976) - An American visual artist synonymous with the Dada and Surrealist movements, Ray was renowned for his fashion and portrait photographs.

© Getty Images

Man Ray - However, Ray also pioneered the photogram (pictured)—a photographic image made without a camera by placing objects directly onto the surface of a light-sensitive material. (Photo: Wikimedia/PD-US)

© Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Andre Kertész (1894–1985) - A master of the photo essay, Hungarian-born Kertész based himself in Paris before emigrating to the United States in 1936 as the threat of war loomed in Europe.

© Public Domain

Andre Kertész - His skills as a photojournalist are perfectly embodied in this simple study, 'Circus, Budapest' (1920).

© Public Domain

Edward Steichen (1879–1973) - Collaborating frequently with Kertész on several photographic projects, Steichen began his professional career as a fashion photographer, but is also highly regarded for his work as director of the Naval Aviation Photographic Unit (pictured) during WWII.

© Public Domain

Edward Steichen - Moving in high society, the photographer's subjects included artists and authors. This image is called 'Henri Matisse and La Serpentine' (1909).

© Public Domain

Alfred Eisenstadt (1898–1995) - As a photographer for Life magazine, Eisenstadt had over 2,500 photo stories published. The German-born American photographer had a gift for working unobtrusively and with natural light.

© Getty Images

Alfred Eisenstadt - Working tirelessly almost until his death, one of his last assignments was photographing US President Bill Clinton and his family (pictured) on Martha's Vineyard. (Photo: Wikimedia/CC BY-SA 3.0)

© Wikimedia/Creative Commons

Gordon Parks (1912–2006) - Multi-talented Parks was a photographer, musician, writer, and film director. He worked as a photojournalist in the 1940s through the 1970s

© Public Domain

Gordon Parks - His image 'American Gothic, Washington, D.C.' typifies his coverage of the civil rights movement in the 1960s. Parks is also remembered as the director of the 1971 film 'Shaft.'

© Public Domain

Eugène Atget (1857–1927) - Picking up a camera in the late 1880s, Atget was an early pioneer of documentary photography. His specialist subjects were street photography and architecture.

© Public Domain

Eugène Atget - The French photographer never received the recognition he deserved during his lifetime and it was only after his death that images like 'Organ Grinder' (1898) and many others were published.

© Public Domain

Julia Margaret Cameron (1815–1879) - One of the very first "celebrity" photographers, Cameron managed to capture many illustrious figures of the day during her short 11-year career as a portrait photographer.

© Getty Images

Julia Margaret Cameron - The British photographer persuaded the likes of poet Lord Tennyson, naturalist Charles Darwin, and eminent scientist Sir John Herschel (pictured, 1867) to sit for her.

© Public Domain

Lewis Hine (1874–1940) - Lewis Hine's raw, powerful images of child laborers in the early 20th century were instrumental in changing child labor laws in the United States.

© Public Domain

Lewis Hine - Typical of his work is this haunting portrait 'Adolescent Girl, a Spinner, in a Carolina Cotton Mill' (1908).

© Public Domain

Eadweard Muybridge (1830–1904) - This English photographer is distinguished for his pioneering work in photographic studies of motion and, in particular, animal locomotion.

© Public Domain

Eadweard Muybridge - He used multiple cameras to capture motion in stop-motion photographs. These were then projected as motion pictures. The image here depict's Muybridge's 'The Horse in Motion' (1878).

© Public Domain

Mathew Brady (1822–1896) - Brady covered the American Civil War as one of the country's earliest photographers. He used a mobile studio and darkroom to shoot on location, in places that included the Antietam battleground.

© Public Domain

Mathew Brady - He also photographed many famous Americans of the era, including presidents Andrew Jackson, John Quincy Adams, and Abraham Lincoln, shown here on the day of Lincoln's Cooper Union Address (1860).

© Public Domain