Taken from the world’s largest photographic archive, (Hulton Archive and Getty Images), the Getty Images Gallery collection features an extraordinary time capsule of the last century – social and political images that both made the news, as well as images from behind the headlines, which show the human race at work and play.

The images in the Getty Images Collection were originally sourced from the Hulton Archive, which comprises over 300 separate collections and over 40 million negatives. This library of images was founded by Edward Hulton, the publisher of Picture Post (a publication that in turn revolutionized picture magazine publishing). The Hulton Archive was taken over by the BBC in 1957, which then added the collections from the Evening Standard and the Daily Express, providing images of British and international events and personalities.

The collection changed hands again in 1987; the Keystone Collection was added, which included image archives from Topical Press, Fox Photos and Central Press. This added to the wealth of images, portraiture, news and feature stories from the 1920s to the 1970s. Keystone also includes Three Lions, which has images from US news and features from the 1900s to 1957. Since merging with a publishing firm, the company is now known as Getty Images.

This stunning collection of photographs encompasses both the public and private lives of the 20th Century and its personalities. Including both famous and relatively unknown images, this glimpse into the Getty Images archive provides an insight into renowned social documentary photography, street photography, and of course, celebrity imagery.