The Genius of Photography - Right Place, Right Time

Documentary series exploring the history of photography - from daguerreotype to digital, from portraits to photo-journalism, from art to advertising. 'Being in the right place at the right time'; 'the decisive moment'; 'getting in close' - in the popular imagination, this is photography at its best, a medium that makes viewers eyewitnesses to the moments when history is made. Just how good is photography at making sense of what it records? Is getting in close always better than standing back, and how decisive are the moments that photographers risk their necks to capture? Set against the backdrop of the Second World War and its aftermath, this episode examines how photographers dealt with dramatic and tragic events like D-Day, the Holocaust and Hiroshima, and the questions their often extraordinary pictures raise about history as seen through the viewfinder. With contributions from Magnum legends Philip Jones-Griffiths and Susan Meiselas, soldier-lensman Tony Vaccaro, 9/11 photographer Joel Meyerowitz, and broadcaster Jon Snow.