One Hundred Photographs

Bruce Bernard was the leading picture editor of his generation, celebrated for his visual taste, knowledge and judgement of photography. His thirty-year career culminated in the remarkable award-winning book Century, published by Phaidon in 1999. In the 1990s, he was commissioned by a private client to assemble a photographic collection and set about acquiring a selection of images that represented, to his unique eye, the best work in the medium from the whole history of photography, ranging from nineteenth-century pioneers like Muybridge and Fox Talbot to giants of the twentieth century like Andr+ Kert+sz, Man Ray, Brassai and Robert Frank. These one hundred photographs are the result: he does not attempt to cover every period or every notable artist, but rather includes only images that 'truly stimulated and satisfied + and seemed could permanently continue to do so'. In other words what he considered to be classics. This is a unique collection that captures, as Bernard himself put it, 'some of the magic of the medium - its uncanny life-preserving qualities and unique perceptions'.Mark Haworth-Booth, Curator of Photographs at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, introduces both Bruce Bernard and the collection and also provides commentaries for each of the one hundred photographs.

Bruce Bernard was Picture Editor of The Sunday Times Magazine from 1972 to 1980 and Visual Arts Editor of the Saturday Independent Magazine for its first four years between 1988 and 1992.