Yalda Moaiery, Photojournalist, known for war, protest, natural disaster, and conflict photographs

Photography’s big break came at the very first two World’s Fairs: 1851 in London and 1855 in Paris. Photography shown at those fairs by Gustave Le Gray, Henri Le Secq, Hippolyte Bayard, and others argued for the new medium’s status as fine art just as many photographers literally argued for exhibition space at Salons and museums. Charges of commercialism, industrialism, and the banality of reproducing quotidian life in all its ugliness clung to photography and even became smears against “photographic” realist painters such as Gustave Courbet. Slowly, however, photography found a place alongside painting.