In 1955, the MOMA, NY, organises the most famous photography exhibition ever: “The Family of Man”. These photos are esthetical, empathic and conventional. In the ‘60s, documentary photography becomes rough and brutal, reporting multiple protests against the establishment : the civil rights movement, the war in Vietnam, the marginal culture of junkies. In Germany, Bernd and Hilla Becher develop their conceptual photography. In the ‘70s, Cindy Sherman investigates the human identity with her feminist conceptual photography, while Robert Mapplethorpe produces purely esthetical homo-erotic pictures. In 1976, William Eggleston exhibits his revolutionary intensely coloured photographs at the MOMA. In the ‘80s, Jeff Wall stage-manages his narrative “light-boxes” and Hiroshi Sugimoto makes his sober and still photographs on theatres and sees. Meanwhile, in Germany, the famous Düsseldorf School of photography creates a dominant trend with Gursky, Ruff, Struth and Höfer. Finally, Rinneke Dijkstra invests herself in psychological portraits of adolescents while exposing human fragility.

A story how photography finally made its way to the museums, galleries and auctions houses