The historian of photography Helmut Gernsheim (1913–1995) owned the largest photography collection in the world. For the first time in half a century, both its sections are reunited in an exhibition catalog: the historical part, housed in the Harry Ransom Center at the University of Texas, Austin, and the contemporary collection in the Reiss-Engelhorn-Museen, Mannheim, Germany. With roughly 220 outstanding photographs, the catalog affords unprecedented insights into the matchless history of the Gernsheim Collection as well as a fascinating overview of the history of photography, beginning with the world's first photographic image by Joseph Nicéphore Niépce in 1826.