Each chapter of the two Photo Icons volumes focuses on a single image which is described and analyzed in detail, in aesthetic, historical, and artistic contexts.

Volume I begins with the very first permanent images (Nicéphore Niépce's 1827 8-hour-exposure rooftop picture and Louis Daguerre's famous 1839 street scene) and takes the reader up through the avant-garde photography of the 1920s.

Volume II explores works such as Dorothea Lange's Migrant Mother (1936) and Robert Doisneau's Kiss in Front of City Hall (1950), up through Martin Parr's 'New European photography.'