A frozen drop of milk. A newborn baby. The ravages of war and terrorism. The defiance of those who protest and the fear of those entrapped. All are included in a multimedia project featuring Time magazine's most influential images of all time, released Thursday through a new book, videos and a website.
The American magazine made a debut of an unprecedented exploration of the 100 most influential photographs of all-time to commemorate the 175th anniversary of photography and the birth of photojournalism.
Three years ago, the magazine began a massive project to pick the most influential photos ever, from the first photo of Earth from space to the world's most famous kiss.
The magazine's editors consulted historians and photo editors and curators around the world, while Time staff interviewed the photographers, picture subjects, friends and family to write essays on each image.
What all 100 share is that they each marked a turning point in our human experience. Check out a sample of the iconic images post 2000 to 2015:
2000: Surfing Hippos by Michael Nichols
Michael Fay undertook an arduous 2,000-mile trek from the Congo in central Africa to Gabon on the continent’s west coast. That was where Nichols captured a photograph of something astonishing—-hippopotamuses swimming in the midnight blue Atlantic Ocean. It was an event few had seen before—while hippos spend most of their time in water, their habitat is more likely to be an inland river or swamp than the crashing sea.
2001: Falling Man by Richard Drew
The most widely seen images from 9/11 are of planes and towers, not people. Falling Man is different. It is one of the only widely seen pictures that shows a man’s distinct escape from the collapsing buildings, a symbol of individuality against the backdrop of faceless skyscrapers— a picture of someone dying !
2003: The Hooded Man by Sergeant Ivan Frederick
Frederick was one of several soldiers who took part in the torture of Iraqi prisoners during Saddam Hussain’s reign. All the more incredible was that they took thousands of images of their mistreatment, humiliation and torture of detainees with digital cameras and shared the photographs.
The man with outstretched arms in the photograph was deprived of his sight, his clothes, his dignity and, with electric wires, his sense of personal safety. And his pose? It seemed deliberately, unnervingly Christlike. The liberating invaders, it seemed, held nothing sacred.
2004: Coffin Ban by Tami Silicio
By April 2004, some 700 US troops had been killed on the battlefield in Iraq, but images of the dead returning home in coffins were never seen. The US government had banned news organizations from photographing such scenes in 1991, arguing that they violated families’ privacy and the dignity of the dead.
However, during President Barack Obama’s first year in office, the Pentagon lifted the ban and the image more than 20 flag-draped coffins as they passed through Kuwait on their way to Dover Air Force Base in Delaware became widely popular.
2007: Gorilla in the Congo by Brent Stirton
Senkwekwe the silverback mountain gorilla weighed at least 500 pounds when his carcass was strapped to a makeshift stretcher, and it took more than a dozen men to hoist it into the air. Brent Stirton captured the scene while in ¬Virunga National Park in the Democratic Republic of Congo. -Senkwekwe and several other gorillas were shot dead as a violent conflict engulfed the park, where half the world’s critically endangered mountain gorillas live.
2011: The Situation Room by Pete Souza
US forces raided Osama bin Laden’s Pakistan compound and killed the terrorist leader. Yet Souza’s picture includes neither the raid nor bin Laden. Instead he captured those watching the secret operation in real time. President Barack Obama made the decision to launch the attack, but like everyone else in the room, he is a mere spectator to its execution. He stares, brow furrowed, at the raid unfolding on monitors. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton covers her mouth, waiting to see its outcome.
2013: North Korea by David Guttenfelder
In early 2013, North Korea made a 3G connection available to foreigners, and suddenly Guttenfelder had the ability to share those glimpses with the world in real time. The country was largely off-limits to foreign journalists and virtually hidden from public view for nearly 60 years.
2014: Oscars Selfie by Bradley Cooper
It was a moment made for the celebrity-saturated Internet age. In the middle of the 2014 Oscars, host Ellen DeGeneres waded into the crowd and corralled some of the world’s biggest stars to squeeze in for a selfie. As Bradley Cooper held the phone, Meryl Streep, Brad Pitt, Jennifer Lawrence and Kevin Spacey, among others, pressed their faces together and mugged. But it was what DeGeneres did next that turned a bit of Hollywood levity into a transformational image. After Cooper took the picture, De-Generes immediately posted it on Twitter, where it was retweeted over 3 million times, more than any other photo in history.
2015: Alan Kurdi by Nilufer Demir
The war in Syria had been going on for more than four years when Alan Kurdi’s parents lifted the 3-year-old boy and his 5-year-old brother into an inflatable boat and set off from the Turkish coast for the Greek island of Kos, just three miles away. Within minutes of pushing off, a wave capsized the vessel, and the mother and both sons drowned. On the shore near the coastal town of Bodrum a few hours later, Demir came upon Alan, his face turned to one side and bottom elevated as if he were just asleep.
“This project does not look at the influence of photographers within the history of the medium, but rather at how history has been influenced by specific photographs,” explained TIME. “Sometimes those two points overlap, but mostly, this project is about the unique power that still images have to influence change – some of these pictures can be disturbing in nature but somehow those are also the pictures that are seared onto the back of our brain, affirming their power,”
reported D’MARGE.
You can view the full list of Top 100 influential photos here. 
 "TIME picks 100 most influential photos of all time")
