Noted for its uncommon vision and aesthetic clarity within a wide reach of the photographic medium, the Sondra Gilman Collection provides an invaluable introduction to the art of photography, to where it has been and where it is going.

Within this volume are some of the finest examples of photography produced over the last one hundred years, from the great masters to the newcomers making their mark. The Preface by Mark Haworth-Booth, curator of photography at the Victoria & Albert Museum, London, discusses the important collections of the past.

Adam Weinberg, curator of the permanent collection for the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, comments on the Sondra Gilman Collection in particular, providing themes to help understand the images: instantaneous time versus the eternal, appropriating other works into a picture, taking the common and making it strange, the self divided as one sees oneself in relation to others, and he includes pointers on developing a collector's eye. Marianne Wiggins plays with the idea of the power of photography.

For each of the photographers featured in the book, there is a thumbnail biography and a significant quote by the photographer about the making of pictures.