1980 | North America - USA
| The Personal Computer (PC) is launched by IBM. |
1980 | Middle East
| Iran-Iraq War |
1982 | South America
| Falklands War |
1983 | North America - USA
| Larry Clark publishes Teenage Lust. |
1983 | North America - USA
| Gilles Peress publishes Telex Iran. |
1983 | North America - USA
| The Museum of Photographic Arts (MoPA) opens officially in San Diego's historic Balboa Park cultural complex with a 7,500 square-foot space |
1984 | North America - USA
| The Getty Museum on Los Angeles opens a photographic department with Weston Naef as the first curator. By the end of 1984, through the acquisition of a number of key collections (including those of Samuel Wagstaff, Volker Kahman/Georg Heusch and Bruno Bischofberger), the collection has grown to 25,000 prints, 1,500 daguerreotypes, 475 albums containing almost 40,000 photographs and about 30,000 stereographs and cartes-de-visite. |
1985 | North America - USA
| Jim Goldberg publishes Rich and Poor. |
1986 | North America - USA
| The space shuttle Challenger explodes. |
1986 | North America - USA
| The Iran-Contra Affair becomes public |
1986 | North America - USA
 Nan Goldin, 1986, Book cover for Nan Goldin "The Ballad of Sexual Dependency" (Aperture, 1986), Book cover, Creative Commons - Wikipedia, LL/47565 | Nan Goldin publishes The Ballad of Sexual Dependency that examines her own life through personal snapshots taken between 1971 and 1985 of her sexual partners, friends and acquaintances as they progress through a personal hell of drugs and sex. The book captures the essence of self-absorption in a surrounding world that doesn't care. |
1986 | North America - USA
| Bruce Weber publishes O Rio de Janeiro. |
1987 | North America - USA
| Bill Burke publishes I Want To Take Picture. |
1987 | North America - USA
 Robert Mapplethorpe, 1986, Andy Warhol, Gelatin silver print, Fabien Fryns Fine Arts (CLOSED), LL/5217 | Andy Warhol dies following a gall bladder operation. He had never fully recovered from a gunshot he received in July 1968 from Valerie Solanis of SCUM (Society for Cutting Up Men). He remains one of the seminal figures of Pop Art and his conversion of the banal into art continues to influence photography. |
1987 | Middle East
| First Intifada (Israel and the Occupied territories) |
1987 | Europe - Russia
| Chernobyl nuclear disaster (Soviet Union) |
1987 | North America - USA
| Karl Baden commences the Every day series in which he takes a stylistically similar self-portrait each day. |
1988 | North America - USA
 Joel Sternfeld, 1987, Book cover for Joel Sternfeld "American Prospects" Introduction by Andy Grundberg. Afterword by Anne W. Tucker (Houston: the Museum of Fine Arts and Times Books, 1987), Book cover, Swann Galleries - New York, LL/28647 | Joel Sternfeld publishes American Prospects. |
1988 | North America - USA
| The Daguerreian Society (3043 West Liberty Ave, Pittsburgh, PA 15216-2460, USA - www.daguerre.org) is founded to promote the study of all aspects of Daguerreotypes. |
1988 | North America - USA
| The Piss Christ photograph of Andres Serrano encourages Senator Jesse Helms (Republican, North Carolina) to argue against federal funding for the National Endowment for the Arts. |
1989 | Europe - Spain
| Joan Fontcuberta and Pere Formiguera publish Fauna. |
1989 | Europe - Germany
| Fall of the Berlin Wall (Germany) |
1990 | North America - USA
| Allen Ginsberg publishes Allen Ginsberg Photographs. |
1990 | North America - USA
| Adobe releases Photoshop 1.0 for Apple Macintosh computers. |
1990 | North America - USA
| An exhibition of photographs by Robert Mapplethorpe at the Cincinnati Art Museum is closed down when the work is accused of being obscene. Although the Museum is cleared there is a shift towards censorship in the arts. |
1991 | North America - USA
| Lothar Baumgarten publishes Carbon. |
1991 | Africa - Northern Africa
| Algerian Civil War |
1991 | Europe
| Balkan Wars |
1991 | Middle East
| First Gulf War |
1992 | North America - USA
| Tim Berners-Lee develops the HTML protocol for exchanging information over the WWW. |
1992 | North America - USA
| Kodak releases the Photo-CD, it is the first popular method of storing digital images that is available to the public. |
1992 | North America - USA
| The JPEG (Joint Photographic Experts Group) image compression standard for digital images is published in IEEE Transactions on Consumer Electronics. As it is non-proprietary and has a high compression rate it becomes the preferred means for transmitting photographic images over the Internet. |
1993 | North America - USA
| The play Angels in America by Tony Kushner is shown on Broadway. |
1993 | North America - USA
| The first browser for WWW HTML pages is released by NCSA. |
1994 | North America - Mexico
| The Zapatista Army of National Liberation (EZLN) fights for the rights of indigenous peoples in the Chiapas region of Mexico. |
1994 | Europe - Germany
| Christian Boltanski publishes Menschlich. |
1994 | North America - USA
| Time magazine is critised for placing a digitally altered photograph of O.J. Simpson on the front cover. |
1994 | North America - USA
| Jock Sturges publishes nude photographs of children in his book Radiant Identities (Aperture) - the book creates considerable controversy with opinions divided between those arguing for freedom of expression whilst others argue that it is child pornography. |
1995 | Europe
| Massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica in the Balkans by Bosnian Serbs |
1995 | North America - USA
| Richard Prince publishes Adult Comedy Action Drama. |
1995 | Asia
| Chechen War |
1996 | North America - USA
| David LaChapelle publishes LaChapelle Land. |
1996 | North America - USA
| Microsoft releases the first version of its Internet Explorer WWW browser. |
1997 | Europe - Great Britain
| The Sensation exhibition at the Royal Academy in London. |
1998 | North America - USA
| American politics are thrown into upheaval by the Clinton White House sex scandal. |