Since its founding in 1974 by Cornell Capa with help from Micha Bar-Am in Willard Straight House, on Fifth Avenue's Museum Mile, ICP has presented over 500 exhibitions, bringing the work of more than 3,000 photographers and other artists to the public in one-person and group exhibitions and provided various classes and workshops for students. ICP was founded as an institution to keep the legacy of "Concerned Photography" alive. After the untimely deaths of his brother Robert Capa and his colleagues Werner Bischof, Chim (David Seymour), and Dan Weiner in the 1950s, Capa saw the need to keep their humanitarian documentary work in the public eye. In 1966 he founded the International Fund for Concerned Photography. By 1974 the Fund needed a home, and the International Center of Photography was created.
The permanent collection at ICP contains more than 100,000 photographs. Since its opening in 1974, ICP has acquired important historical and contemporary images through an acquisitions committee and through donations and bequests from photographers and collectors. The collection spans the history of photography, including daguerrotypes, gelatin silver and digital chromogenic prints.
The collection is strongest in its holdings of American and European documentary photography of the 1930s to the 1990s. It comprises large bodies of work byW. Eugene Smith, Henri Cartier-Bresson, Robert Capa, the Farm Security Administration photographers, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Lisette Model, Gordon Parks,James VanDerZee, and Garry Winogrand. Recent purchases have included work by contemporary photographers such as Carrie Mae Weems, Justine Kurland,Katy Grannan, Vik Muniz, and Susan Meiselas.
Another component of the collection is a significant group of photographically illustrated magazines, particularly those published between World War I and II, such as Vu, Regards, Picture Post, Lilliput, Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, and Life