Can photographs still exert power in an age when millions of pictures are taken and shared every minute, and when a viewer’s first response is to question whether an image is even real?

Every few months, a team of editors on the Guardian’s Saturday magazine puts together a special photography package in print and digital formats. It features photographs that don’t just stop the scroll, they have also prompted the rewriting of history books. They are the kind of images that have changed the world in some way or radically shifted people’s perceptions.

Each issue has a particular theme. Earlier this month, the magazine featured photographs that have changed how we view masculinity – from a 1950 portrait of Marlon Brando in a white T-shirt to a paparazzi shot of David Beckham in a sarong and a bare-chested Vladimir Putin on horseback.…