Picture Book

Since 1839, observed Susan Sontag in On Photography, “just about everything has been photographed, or so it seems.” She added that the “insatiability of the photographing eye” has taught us a new visual code, altering and enlarging “our notions of what is worth looking at and what we have a right to observe.” For her, as for many others, “to collect photographs is to collect the world.” These are significant ideas to keep in mind while leafing through Facing Black Star, a selection of black and white images drawn from a massive collection assembled over the course of eighty years.

But first things first: the founders of the agency that sold these photos named their company after the star in sets of printers’ type, hoping it would become an identifiable symbol. What is now known as the Black Star Collection consists of 291,049 photographic prints, including “iconic...