Time Picks the 100 Most Influential Photos in History

Time magazine reveals its picks for 100 Most Influential Images of All Time.

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Complex Original

Image via Complex Original

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Time magazine announced its picks for the 100 Most Influential Images of All Time Thursday—and in case you were wondering, President Barack Obama meeting president-elect Donald Trump didn’t make the cut, though Obama did make the list in another photo. Spanning from the 1800s to 2015, the photos cover major events like the moon landing, Vietnam War, and 9/11, while featuring figures like Muhammad Ali and the celebrities in the selfie to end all celebrity selfies at the 2014 Oscars.   

Presenting the stories behind each photo, which will be compiled in a book as well, Time also created 20 short documentaries about 20 of the selected photos.

Time’s photos include 1955’s photo of 14-year-old Emmett Till in a casket. Till, who was black, allegedly winked at a white woman. The woman’s husband and his brother beat, shot, and wrapped Till in barbed wire before being dumping him in a river. The men were acquitted by a white jury. Till’s story remains a touchstone in the age of Black Lives Matter.

The star-studded 2014 Oscars selfie featured Oscars host Ellen DeGeneres, Jennifer Lawrence, Channing Tatum, Meryl Streep, Julia Roberts, Kevin Spacey, Bradley Cooper, Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, Lupita Nyong’o, and her brother Junior.  It went on to become Twitter’s most retweeted tweet, with 3.3 million retweets to date.

Also on the list was "Lunch Atop a Skyscraper", the instantly recognizable photo of construction workers in New York City on break while building Rockefeller Center. Complex paid homage to the photo this summer in cover story with some of the hardest working men in showbiz, Chance the Rapper and creator of Broadway’s hit musical Hamilton, Lin-Manuel Miranda.

President Obama appears alongside Vice President Joe Biden and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton in The Situation Room watching as Osama Bin Laden’s compound was raided by U.S. forces May 1, 2011. That night, Obama announced Bin Laden had been killed in the raid. Other photos include last year’s photo of a young boy who drowned escaping Syria, Muhammad Ali standing over a knocked out Sonny Liston in a 1965 fight, and 1945’s V-J Day in Times Square where a Navy sailor kisses a random nurse.

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