Cecil Beaton, celebrated portrait and fashion photographer from the 1920s through the 1970s, remembered the revolutionary feeling in photography when female models were allowed to spread their feet apart—even a little. Prior etiquette demanded that the two feet touch. Times change. Here, Max Vadukul takes the viewer right into bed with Amy Winehouse on her wedding day. That she is clothed takes nothing away from the seduction. Rolling Stone ran the picture across two pages in its June 14, 2007, issue under the heading “The Diva and Her Demons.” The photograph dramatizes the challenge of all stars of the twenty-first century: what do you reveal and what do you protect as you approach stardom?

In 1979, the artist Andy Earl, then twenty-four years old, represented Britain at the Venice Biennale (an international contemporary art exhibition).The year before, the impresario Malcolm McLaren, manager of the Sex Pistols, had seen Earl’s blurred and haunting color photographs at the Photographers’ Gallery in London. When McLaren wanted something striking and shocking for the cover of a new album by Bow Wow Wow, a group he represented, he remembered Earl’s photography. Together they settled on a re-envisioning of the nineteenth-century French artist Edouard Manet’s famous painting Le déjeuner sur l’herbe (The Luncheon on the Grass) of 1863. The male musicians, beautifully costumed by fashion designer Vivienne Westwood, were delicately arranged, and the naked teenaged lead singer, Annabella Lwin, carefully positioned. To McLaren’s delight, the picture immediately became controversial: the underage rock star did not have her mother’s permission to pose naked.

Michael Putland was the official photographer on some of the Rolling Stones’ U.S. and European tours. He had access granted no other photographer and was able to stay in the “pit” for entire concerts while the other photographers were asked to leave after the first three songs. Putland laments the lack of discrimination in the press today when it comes to celebrity portraiture. “There is no premium for quality,” he says. “I love photography, not the nonsense.”