Fascinating Times: a century of photographs from the nation's most prestigious newspaper.

Carefully selected from more than 1,000,000 pictures in The New York Times' archives, this exhibition of the visual image imparts the gripping immediacy that constitutes both an indispensable presence in the daily paper and a vital part of history.

COMMEMORATING the 100th anniversary of Adolph S. Ochs' purchase of The New York Times, The Museum of Modern Art, New York, has mounted an exhibition of 150 black-and-white photographs of major world events, human interest stories, and natural and man-made disasters, as well as politicians, celebrities, and sports figures.

As Peter Galassi, chief curator of the exhibition, indicates in the book, Pictures of the Times: A Century of Photography from The New York Times, when Ochs bought the paper in August, 1868, "there were no photographs at all in the newspaper. The medium of photography was more than half a century old, but the process of translating a photograph into ink on paper without copying it by hand was stir] in its infancy. Around the turn of the century, as photomechanical reproduction became practical for newspaper production, photographs gradually began to replace the hand-drawn illustrations that had been common since the 1840s and 1 850s in such publications as the Illustrated London News and Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper. . . .

"The rise of photomechanical reproduction brought photographs to a vastly expanded audience. Access to that audience in turn created a new need for a realm of photographs that had barely existed before. Once photographs could appear in the newspaper, it eventually followed that they must, but it took time to establish networks for gathering photographs from around the world--and to learn how to make pictures that could wear the aspect of the news.

". . . The New York Times was slow to make use of photographs outside of its illustrated Sunday magazine, which Ochs founded shortly after acquiring the paper. Praising...