“Today everything exists to end in a photograph.” —Susan Sontag
From its humble invention in the hands of scientists, through its long fight to achieve the status of “fine art”, to its current proliferation via the cameras of mobile phones, the two-century rise of photography has been nothing short of meteoric. Although we had to exclude dozens from the list, we thought we’d take you on a brief tour through the history of Artsy’s most popular medium, through the works of 12 photographers.