# What is the most famous photograph ever taken?

> Some of these are war reporting, some are advertisements for the whole planet. Every pairing asks what famous actually means.

*By YPB Team · Published August 23, 2026 · https://youpick.best/ranking/what-is-the-most-famous-photograph-ever-taken*

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## Current results (no votes yet)

1. **Raising the Flag on Iwo Jima** — score 1000/1000
   Joe Rosenthal's 1945 photograph of six Marines raising a flag on Mount Suribachi.
2. **Guerrillero Heroico** — score 770/1000
   Alberto Korda's 1960 portrait of Che Guevara, endlessly reprinted on posters and shirts.
3. **V-J Day in Times Square** — score 719/1000
   Alfred Eisenstaedt's 1945 photograph of a sailor kissing a woman as the Second World War ended.
4. **The Blue Marble** — score 582/1000
   The Apollo 17 crew's 1972 image of a fully lit Earth, one of the most reproduced photographs in history.
5. **Pale Blue Dot** — score 582/1000
   Voyager 1's 1990 photograph of Earth as a single pixel from beyond the orbit of Neptune.
6. **Pillars of Creation** — score 513/1000
   The Hubble Space Telescope's 1995 image of star-forming columns of gas in the Eagle Nebula.
7. **Migrant Mother** — score 513/1000
   Dorothea Lange's 1936 portrait of Florence Owens Thompson became the face of the Great Depression.
8. **The First Photograph of a Person** — score 434/1000
   Louis Daguerre's 1838 view of a Paris boulevard, which accidentally captured a man having his boots polished.
9. **Muhammad Ali over Sonny Liston** — score 342/1000
   Neil Leifer's 1965 photograph of Ali standing over Liston in Lewiston, Maine.
10. **The Steerage** — score 342/1000
   Alfred Stieglitz's 1907 photograph of passengers on a transatlantic liner, a founding image of modern photography.
11. **Buzz Aldrin's Visor** — score 233/1000
   Neil Armstrong's photograph of Aldrin on the lunar surface, with Armstrong reflected in the gold visor.
12. **Afghan Girl** — score 233/1000
   Steve McCurry's 1984 National Geographic cover portrait of Sharbat Gula in a Pakistani refugee camp.
13. **Lunch atop a Skyscraper** — score 233/1000
   Eleven ironworkers eating on a girder above Manhattan during the construction of Rockefeller Center in 1932.
14. **Earthrise** — score 103/1000
   William Anders photographed the Earth rising over the lunar horizon from Apollo 8 on 24 December 1968.

Tags: photography, space, nasa