Imaging technology and desktop processing power may have dramatically altered the practice of commercial photography in the last 50 years, but what they haven’t done is diminish the power of a compelling image. We’ve chosen a handful of influential photographs from our archives, along with comments culled from some of the 141 feature articles we’ve published on many of the most esteemed practitioners of the craft, to give you an overview of the evolution and diversity of this most visual of media.

“You can’t program nature. I can pick a place I’ve photographed before and I can do it again with different lighting and at a different time of year. It changes every time.” —David Muench, 1976

“Photography is a search, but also a game played with a delicate, beautiful and responsive toy. It is geared to our times and has seemingly no limitations as to the players or the games they can play.” —Farrell Grehan, 1980

“People don’t pay you to experiment. They want to know what you can do before they come to your studio. When people start thinking they want to use you, they try to finesse the layouts toward your strengths.” —Dennis Manarchy, 1981

“Light moves through a shot. It has a force, a driving force. It pushes into something. I use the dynamics of light to bring you into the picture. It’s like a vacuum which can suck you right in.” —Clint Clemens, 1983

 

“An idea is just that, an idea. When you actually execute this idea, you may wind up with something completely different than the original visual idea, but the feeling is still there.” —Barbara Bordnick, 1987

“I want to approach each picture like a beginner. A beginner has many possibilities. An expert few.” —Yuri Dojc, 1988

“Quality and quantity of light, that’s the magic-understanding where it comes from, especially the ambient light and fusing it with a flash. To me the ambient light is always the hero, the dominating factor.” —Harry De Zitter, 1990

“I love taking pictures of circuses. Talk about symbols-the sense of fantasy and humor and irony and tragedy—and theater! It can be a tough way of life, but people love it. It gets in their blood.” —Mary Ellen Mark, 1997

“My subject matter doesn’t separate me from what my colleagues do in fashion or annual reports. I go out with certain images in mind—very much like a commercial photographer. There’s always serendipity. Luck always takes over.” —Frans Lanting, 1998