Bruce Bernard was the leading picture editor of his generation, celebrated for his visual taste, knowledge and judgement of photography. His 30-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 such as Muybridge and Fox Talbot to giants of the twentieth century such as Andre Kertesz, Man Ray, Brassai and Robert Frank.

These 100 photographs are the result. Bernard does not attempt to cover every period or every notable artist, but rather includes only images that truly stimulated and satisfied, and that seemed to him capable of doing so on a perpetual basis. This is a unique collection that captures, as Bernard himself put it, some of the 'magic of the medium' - photography's uncanny life-affirming qualities and unique perceptions.