100 years of great press photographs

Click your way through the highlights of the Guardian and Observer’s series on the greatest press photos from the last century. The series includes incredible reportage from the world’s conflict zones and moving social documentary of everyday life. Buy the Guardian and Observer this weekend for collectable booklets with the best pictures from the last two decades.

Main image: Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair during the Dudley West by-election, 1994. Photograph: Don McPhee/The Guardian

  • Michael Appleton

    2006, New Orleans On September 4, 2005, nearly a week after New Orleans’ flood defences failed under the impact of Hurricane Katrina, much of the city remained underwater and deserted. To add insult to injury, fires continued to burn as a result of gas leaks, fallen power lines and in some cases, arson.
    Great press photography: New Orleans’ flood defences failed under the impact of Hurricane Katrina

  • Anonymous

    2006, Antalya, Turkey The most serious of bomb blasts in Turkey in the late summer of 2006 was in the southern city of Antalya, where this picture was taken. Ten Britons, including four children, were hurt in another blast on a bus in the popular south-western coastal resort of Marmaris.
    Great press photography: The aftermath of a bomb blast in Turkey in 2006 in the city of Antalya

  • Alexander Chadwick

    2005, London One of the key images to have remained in people’s consciousness since the 7/7 bombings on London Underground, this camera-phone image – taken by someone involved in the disaster – has forced a reconsideration of the way in which press images are both produced and circulated in the 21st century.
    Great press photography: Taken underground, this image, shows an evacuation during the 7/7 bombings

  • Dan Chung

    2004, Basra, Iraq For British troops, Basra is the first big battle of the Iraq war. For this girl, like the other estimated 100,000 children in the city aged under five, the chaos spells sheer terror as families flee across a bridge over the Shatt al-Arab.
    Great press photography: The terror is etched across this girl's face as a family flee Basra, 2004

  • Sean Smith

    2003, Baghdad, Iraq "One morning, during the 2003 invasion of Iraq, I got my driver to take me to an affluent suburb of central Baghdad. The rumour was that there had been a meeting of senior Iraqi military in one of the houses and so it had been hit the night before … When I arrived, I tried to hang back, hoping someone would appear. Then suddenly a kid, who I had seen around before, came back. This time he was carrying a rabbit."
    Great press photography: Bomb damage in the civilian neighourhood, a child recovers a rabbit

  • Jonas Bendiksen

    2000, Russia"The picture was taken in the Altai territory of Russia, right in the border regions of Kazakhstan. It shows the second stage of a Soyuz rocket in the crash zone where they come down to earth. You can see them fall during the day, and usually hear the big bang as they hit the ground. These things are made out of pretty good metal too, so a lot of the locals make a living chasing rocket parts, before selling them as scrap. If you look very carefully, you can see that the white things all around them are butterflies or moths." Jonas Bendiksen is a Norwegian photographer based in New York.
    Press photography: Two men sit on top of a crashed Soyuz rocket in Altai, Russia

  • Carol Guzy

    1999, Kukes, Albania Refugees from the war of secession from Serbia in Kosovo. Guzy, a working-class American, clearly empathises with the ethnic Albanian children savouring freedom from fear in the northern Albanian mountains.
    Great press photography: Refugees from the war in Kosovo

  • Jean Gaumy

    1998, Spain Gaumay grew up close to the bay of Biscay and later, as a Magnum photographer, made several voyages with fishing fleets. The foredeck is like a jumbled factory floor; fishermen in oilskins move carefully; men and the rusty boat they sail in are frozen in a tableau, dwarfed and imperilled by the mobile, threatening majesty of the sea.
    Great press photography: The foredeck of this ship is like a jumbled factory floor

  • Paolo Pellegrin

    1998, Phnom Penh, Cambodia Nhan, a 25-year-old Vietnamese former prostitute living with Aids in Cambodia, poses for her portrait behind a veiling mosquito net that seems to suggest the distances and ordeals that separate her from us.
    Great press photography: Nhan, a 25-year-old former prostitute living with Aids in Cambodia

  • Don McPhee

    1994, Dudley, UK Alastair Campbell: “I remember the day vividly. It was the Dudley West by-election … We were in the corner of a bar or restaurant in Dudley. We only had 10-20 minutes set aside for the local press but there were lots of people from our party chatting away at the bar. I didn’t want to tell them to shut up, so I just gave them an angry look …”
    Great press photography: Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair during the Dudley West by-election, 1994

  • Tom Stoddart

    1992, Sarajevo “This was not the story of a mum who was crying because she was sending her son away … I was actually going with him on the bus … Instead, I was trying to hold back my tears because I knew that I was leaving my beloved country, which had been ruined by the folly of the war …” Gordana Burazor, evacuated from Sarajevo in 1992.
    Press photography: Gordana Burazor and young son, wait to be evacuated from Sarajevo in 1992

  • Denis Thorpe

    1992, Ulverston, UK A surreal image created when Fleur Laverack and Jem Hulbert were rehearsing juggling and unicycling on a frosty morning on the hills overlooking Morecambe Bay above Ulverston, Cumbria.
    Great press photography: Fleur Laverack and Jem Hulbert rehearsing, Morecambe Bay

  • Don McPhee

    1986, South Pennines, UK Saddleworth Moor is saddled for ever with the terrible secrets of Ian Brady and Myra Hindley. In 1986 when Hindley was taken there and the moor sealed off by 200 police, McPhee crept through and caught these officers and their dogs in this chilling shroud of mist.
    Press photography: Police searching for the child victims of the Moors Murders

  • Mike Sargent

    1986, Washington Perhaps mindful that, to most people, his acting career boiled down to the comedy, Bedtime for Bonzo, in 1985 Ronald Reagan picked up a snowball and reminded everyone of his role as legendary Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Grover Cleveland Alexander in the 1952 bio-flick, The Winning Team.
    Great press photography: Ronald Regan hurls a snowball

  • John Sturrock

    1984, Wath, UK There’s not much to laugh about, but it’s Christmas Day and the pitmen of Wath and their wives are preparing dinner. Wath was one in a chain of South Yorkshire pits which came out on strike before the unions had declared it official.
    Great press photography: the wives of the pitmen preparing dinner on Christmas day, 1984

  • Alex Webb

    1979, San Ysidro, California “I was working on a feature about the US-Mexico border when this image was taken. It was a long job and I was on the road for about a month and a half. That day I was driving along with a border patrol officer, looking out of the window to my right at this field. This scene developed in front of me …”
    Great press photography: patrol officers stop suspects in the US-Mexico border

  • Don McPhee

    1974, Belfast The Guardian’s McPhee catches Enoch Powell addressing a meeting in King's Hall, Belfast, in the year he left the Tories after falling out with the Heath leadership.
    Great press photography: Enoch Powell addressing a meeting in King's Hall, Belfast

  • Robert Smithies

    1972, Manchester, UK Robert’s sympathetic eye captures an abstract image through the reeded-glass panel in a door at Manchester employment and benefits office. The caption in 1972 read: “Waiting for the payout”, when the numbers of unemployed were expected to top one million.
    Press photography: An abstract image through a glass panel door at an employment office

  • William Anders

    1968 Words shed their power before the majesty of this view of Earth from the moon; “Earthrise,” the Apollo 8 mission commander Frank Borman named it. Anders actually shot it from his position in orbit, that is, with the moon’s surface vertical. Time Life Pictures/Getty
    Great press photography: A view of Earth from the moon

  • Josef Koudelka

    1968, Prague Josef Koudelka’s images of Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1968 are an extraordinary chronicle of the mass protest that greeted their arrival. Devoid of movement, this image of an anonymous passer-by, whose watch records the exact time of the invasion, records a moment in which time seems to stand still.
    Press photography: Josef Koudelka’s image of Russian tanks rolling into Prague in 1968

  • Mario Giacomelli

    circa 1962-63, Rome A comic irreverence, with a hint of the harsher satire of Catholicism in the films of his contemporary Federico Fellini, make Giacomelli's series Pretini (Little Priests) beautifully evocative of an Italy that was enjoying its postwar economic “miracle" and no longer so awed by the miracles of faith.
    Great press photography: Italian priests enjoy the snow in Rome

  • Werner Bischof

    1952, Koje Do, South Korea Captured soldiers are surrounded by textile phantoms in Swiss photojournalist Bischof's subversively beautiful glimpse of a detention camp for captured North Korean troops.
    Great press photography: captured soldiers are surrounded by textile phantoms in South Korea

  • RV Spencer

    1951, Haengju, South Korea A young girl carrying her brother passes a stalled US M-26 Pershing tank. Communist North Korea had invaded South Korea 12 months earlier. The UN sent a force to combat the communists and China sent a force to back the North. What might have blown up into the third world war ended with truce in 1953.
    Great press photography: A young girl carrying her brother passes a stalled US M-26 Pershing tank.

  • W Eugene Smith

    1951, Deleitosa, Spain Eugene Smith’s reputation as “the father of the photo essay” is founded on the seminal series of stories he shot for Life magazine in the 1950s which included this powerful image of life and death from “Spanish Village”.
    Press photography: W Eugene Smith's photgraph of a spanish wake

  • Anonymous 1943, Warsaw, Poland Jews being rounded up for the death camps became an almost commonplace sight during the Holocaust. This picture was taken just after the three-week uprising in the Warsaw ghetto in spring 1943, which severely shocked the Nazis. Thousands of Jews had fought the good fight against the Germans and won a bloody moral victory before these survivors were rounded up.
    Great press photography: Jews being rounded up for the death camps, Warsaw

  • Weegee

    1941, New York The looks on these young spectators' faces are more troubling than if he had shown the bleeding body they are staring at. The bleak facades of buildings behind them establish their social context: they are growing up in a tough world and this is their tough response to it, to treat a murder scene as entertainment.
    Press photography: Young spectators treat a murder scene as entertainment in New York

  • Russell Lee

    circa 1940, Oklahoma, US Glistening reddened faces start out of the wine-tinted shadows as colour photography reveals the blushing and flushing reality of a country dance one night in the midwest long ago. The rawness of colour makes these people live on forever in their love and awkwardness.
    Great press photography: reddened faces start out of the shadows of a country dance in the midwest

  • Margaret Bourke-White

    1937, Kentucky, US Bourke-White captures one of America’s principle contradictions following the 1937 Ohio flood. Against a backdrop of wholesome affluence, the reality of American life is not quite as advertised, as African-Americans line up for relief.
    Press photography: African-Americans line up for relief following the 1937 Ohio flood

  • Murray Becker

    1937, New Jersey, US Robert Buchanan, 90, was working as civilian ground crew beneath the Hindenburg when it caught fire: “I was on the ground, directly under the fire when it started. Engine number one was roaring at full throttle … and I could see sparks and flames coming out of it. I thought at the time: Oh boy, I’m standing under 7m cubic feet of hydrogen …”
    Great press photography: Robert Buchanan witnesses the Hindenburg catching fire

  • Dorothea Lange

    1936, California, US Lange’s most famous photograph was taken in a pea-picker camp in Nipomo, California. The woman’s name was Florence Thompson. She is the mythical mother, the unshakable fortress-refuge of our childhood fantasies, the one to whom we can turn when there is no one else.
    Great press photography: Lange’s most famous photograph. The woman’s name was Florence Thompson.

  • Walter Doughty

    1922, Dublin An Irish Free State soldier crouches behind the window of a bank in O’Connell Street that is under attack from the hotel opposite. The hotel is occupied by republican insurgents fighting a civil war against the new state. Behind the soldier is the Guardian’s first staff photographer, Walter Doughty, working under fire with a heavy glass-plate camera.
    Press photography: An Irish Free State soldier crouches behind a window in Dublin, 1922

  • HG Ponting

    1911, Antartica Scott’s ship, Terra Nova, seen through a grotto in the Antarctic: the most famous of the photographs by Herbert Ponting from the ill‑fated expedition. Sadly the drama of Scott’s death obliterates interest in Ponting’s work.
    Great press photography: Scott’s ship, Terra Nova, seen through a grotto in the Antarctic

  • Christopher Pratt

    1910, Bradford, UK These women passing Popplewell’s grocery shop on Seymour Street are dressed for work in a mill: in 1910 the wool industry was heavily dependent on female and child labour. Pratt was a Methodist industrialist who created a rich photographic record of Bradford life.
    Press photography: Women passing Popplewell’s grocery shop on Seymour Street, Bradford, 1910

  • William Warneke 1910, New Jersey, US Warneke is on a routine assignment for the New York World. He is to photograph the city’s mayor, William J Gaynor, on board the SS Kaiser Wilhelm der Grosse off Hoboken, New Jersey. Warneke points his camera at Gaynor and releases the shutter a fraction after a sacked New York docks employee shoots the mayor in the throat at close range.
    Great press photography: Warneke points his camera at the NY Mayor a fraction after he is shot
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