Photojournalism
Started: 1853
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KEY ARTISTS
 | Henri Cartier-Bresson Quick View Artist Page |
| Henri Cartier-Bresson |  |
| The French photographer Henri Cartier-Bresson defined the field of photojournalism and created some of the most memorable photos of the greatest world events of his era. He also brilliantly captured "the decisive moment", the split second when an intersting and powerful composition is best photographed. Art Story: Henri Cartier-Bresson Artist Page | ||
 | Weegee Quick View Artist Page |
| Weegee | |
| Weegee was a legendary news photographer, whose stock and trade were candid shots of people in the streets, in bars, and at crime scenes in New York City. Art Story: Weegee Artist Page | ||
 | Josef Koudelka Quick View Artist Page |
| Josef Koudelka | |
| Koudelka is a Czech-born French itinerant photographer known for his depictions of gypsies and the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. Art Story: Josef Koudelka Artist Page | ||
 | Dorothea Lange Quick View Artist Page |
| Dorothea Lange | |
| Dorothea Lange's images of Depression America made her one of the most acclaimed documentary photographers of the twentieth century. She went on to become a leading photo-journalist working for magazines such as Fortune and Life. Art Story: Dorothea Lange Artist Page | ||
 | Lee Miller Quick View Artist Page |
| Lee Miller | |
| Lee Miller was an American photographer and former fashion model who lived abroad in Paris and collaborated with Man Ray and other Surrealists. During World War II, she became well known as a war-time correspondent, covering the London blitz, the liberation of Paris, and freeing of the concentration camps of Buchenwald and Dachau. Art Story: Lee Miller Artist Page | ||
 | Cecil Beaton Quick View Artist Page |
| Cecil Beaton | |
| Beaton was an influential fashion photographer known for his technical precision and staging, helping to form the sophisticated style of the 1930s. Beaton was also a successful set and costume designer, and war photographer. Art Story: Cecil Beaton Artist Page | ||
"Photography for me is not looking, it's feeling. If you can't feel what you're looking at, then you're never going to get others to feel anything when they look at your pictures."
Summary of Photojournalism
Though one might be forgiven for sometimes confusing it with Documentary and Street Photography, Photojournalism possesses a vitality and a force all of its own. At its most rudimentary, Photojournalism is the practice of conveying the urgency of current news stories through pictures. It is true that a photojournalistic image can sometimes be left to speak for itself, but more usually it develops a narrative in conjunction with a written text; a comingling, in other words, of photography and journalism. Photojournalism is the lifeblood of the daily press, but it is associated predominantly with the rise of dedicated photo magazines, the Sunday Supplement, and their preference for the so-called photo-essay.
Photojournalism deals with important, or newsworthy, subject matter, and its two overarching themes are world events and social injustice. Given, moreover, that photojournalists are usually committed to exposing wrongs, photojournalism is predicated on an unwritten code of practice that states that - if it is to adhere to the very highest standards of journalistic objectivity - the image must not be staged or manipulated. These rules are easier to apply to live action photography, however, and in actual practice the codes of practice can be bent where the urgency of the situation has demanded it. And while photojournalistic images tend to be very much "of the moment," Photojournalism has become instrumental in how we have come to view the last 170 years of world history.
Key Ideas
Beginnings:
The first cameras were seen as little more than machines for documenting reality. Early pioneers such as Louis-Jacques-Mandé Daguerre and Henry Fox-Talbot used their cameras to either produce studio portraits or to photograph public spaces and landmarks and the realization that photography could be used to inform the public emerged soon thereafter. The first true Photojournalism, however, is usually attributed to Carol Szathmari and Roger Fenton who used their cameras to document the Crimean War (1853-56). Szathmari, a Romanian painter, became a war photographer when, on his own initiative, he outfitted a wagon with a dark room and headed first to the banks of the Danube River, and onward then, to other Crimean battlefields. He exhibited approximately 200 war photographs at the 1855 Paris World Exhibition to great acclaim and was subsequently appointed Court Painter and Photographer for Romania in 1863.
Important Art and Artists of Photojournalism | |
  | Valley of the Shadow of Death, April 23, 1855 (1885)Artist: Robert Fenton Artwork description & Analysis: Fenton's image, which depicts a ravine in a desolate landscape beneath a bleak empty sky, is populated only with cannonballs. Strewn along the road on the right, and filling the ditch between the road and two paths on the left, the cannonballs are meant to represent British casualties of the Crimean war. The perspective of the photograph, looking up toward the sloping hills and around the incline of the road, captures something of the sense of hopelessness at being trapped in a valley under enemy fire from above. As Fenton described it: "the sight passed all imagination: round shot and shell lay like a stream at the bottom of the hollow all the way down, you could not walk without treading upon them." Salted paper print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles California |
 | A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1863 (1863)Artist: Timothy H. O'Sullivan Artwork description & Analysis: This image, possibly the best known of Brady's Civil War photographs, depicts dead soldiers scattered on the battlefield after the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place between July 1-3, 1863. The photograph was included in Alexander Gardner's, Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866), with text that read: "it was, indeed, a 'harvest of death' that was presented; hundreds and thousands of torn Union and rebel soldiers - although many of the former were already interred - strewed the now quiet fighting ground." The image was preceded by Gardner's hope that "Such a picture conveys a useful moral: It shows the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry. Here are the dreadful details! Let them aid in preventing such another calamity." Albumen silver print - Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York New York |
 | The Crawlers (1877)Artist: John Thomson Artwork description & Analysis: This picture depicts a destitute middle-aged woman holding a sleeping child on her lap, as she rests on a doorstep. The Crawlers was intended to communicate the dire situation of London's poor and to advocate a call for social change. The image was one of 36 published in Street Life in London (1877) with the writer Adolphe Smith Headingly's text relating the story of how the woman, through circumstances beyond her control, "descended penniless into the street." Using photographs to uphold the arguments presented by the text, the book helped pioneer the concept of the photo-essay. Woodbury type - Victoria and Albert Museum, London England |
More Photojournalism Artwork and Analysis:
Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
" Movement Overview and Analysis". [Internet]. . TheArtStory.org
Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle
Edited and published by The Art Story Contributors
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First published on 25 Mar 2019. Updated and modified regularly. 
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