The ultimate guide to the magic and mystery of photography, featuring the landmark photographs, inventions, innovations, exhibitions and publications that changed the way we see the world.

Photography has not simply changed how we capture the world: it has changed how we view it, structuring our very ways of seeing. This ambitious publication, timed to coincide with the 200th anniversary of the first-ever photograph, brings together photographs from leading image-makers – including Zanele Muholi, Andreas Gursky, Man Ray, Sebastião Salgado, Hannah Höch, Barbara Kruger and Edward Steichen – alongside unexpected selections.

From the earliest 19th-century experiments in fixing light on paper, photography has blossomed and proliferated to a point where some 1.9 trillion photographs are snapped annually. Photographs are now at the core of our image-dominated culture. This is Photography: The First 200 Years carves a cohesive, compelling path through this dizzying mass of information. Presented chronologically, the book showcases key photographs and objects year by year, each one accompanied by a short text entry offering historical, technical or critical context. Interleaved throughout are longer thematic texts by contributing writers, as well as extracts from the writings of photographers and major thinkers on the subject, bringing a depth of understanding to the principal genres and developments in photography.

Alongside pivotal and instantly recognizable photographic works – from Eadweard Muybridge’s motion studies to Rosalind Franklin’s DNA imaging, and from the documentary work of Robert Frank to Cindy Sherman – This is Photography records the objects, cameras, technical developments, exhibitions and publications that have shaped the medium, making this an essential resource for anyone interested in photography.

Nathalie Herschdorfer is an author and curator specializing in photography. She is the director of Photo Elysée in Lausanne, Switzerland, and a curator with FEP (Foundation for the Exhibition of Photography). Her previous publications include Man Ray: Liberating Photography, Deborah Turbeville: Photocollage, Body – The Photobook and Coming into Fashion, all published by Thames & Hudson.