Photojournalism
Photojournalism is journalism that uses images to tell a news story. It usually only refers to still images, but can also refer to video used in broadcast journalism. Photojournalism is distinguished from other close branches of photography by having a rigid ethical framework which demands an honest and impartial approach that tells a story in strictly journalistic terms. Photojournalists contribute to the news media, and help communities connect with one other. They must be well-informed and knowledgeable, and are able to deliver news in a creative manner that is both informative and entertaining.
Similar to a writer, a photojournalist is a reporter, but they must often make decisions instantly and carry photographic equipment, often while exposed to significant obstacles, among them immediate physical danger, bad weather, large crowds, and limited physical access to their subjects.
History
Origins in war photography
The practice of illustrating news stories with photographs was made possible by printing and photography innovations that occurred in the mid 19th century. Although early illustrations had appeared in newspapers, such as an illustration of the funeral of Lord Horatio Nelson in The Times, the first weekly illustrated newspaper was the Illustrated London News, first printed in 1842. The illustrations were printed with the use of engravings.The first photograph to be used in illustration of a newspaper story was a depiction of barricades in Paris during the June Days uprising taken on 25 June 1848; the photo was published as an engraving in L'Illustration of 1–8 July 1848.
During the Crimean War, the ILN pioneered the birth of early photojournalism by printing pictures of the war that had been taken by Roger Fenton. Fenton was the first official war photographer and his work included documenting the effects of the war on the troops, panoramas of the landscapes where the battles took place, model representations of the action, and portraits of commanders, which laid the groundwork for modern photojournalism. Other photographers of the war included William Simpson and Carol Szathmari. Similarly, the American Civil War photographs of Mathew Brady were engraved before publication in Harper's Weekly. The technology had not yet developed to the point of being able to print photographs in newspapers, which greatly restricted the audience of Brady's photographs. However, it was still common for photographs to be engraved and subsequently printed in newspapers or periodicals throughout the war. Disaster, including train wrecks and city fires, was also a popular subject for illustrated newspapers in the early days.
Expansion
The printing of images in newspapers remained an isolated occurrence in this period. Photos were used to enhance the text rather than to act as a medium of information in its own right. This began to change with the work of one of the pioneers of photojournalism, John Thomson, in the late 1870s. In collaboration with the radical journalist Adolphe Smith, he began publishing a monthly magazine, Street Life in London, from 1876 to 1877. The project documented in photographs and text, the lives of the street people of London and established social documentary photography as a form of photojournalism. Instead of the images acting as a supplement to the text, he pioneered the use of printed photographs as the predominant medium for the imparting of information, successfully combining photography with the printed word.On March 4, 1880, The Daily Graphic published the first halftone reproduction of a news photograph.
In March 1886, when General George Crook received word that the Apache leader Geronimo would negotiate surrender terms, photographer C. S. Fly took his equipment and attached himself to the military column. During the three days of negotiations, Fly took about 15 exposures on glass negatives. His photos of Geronimo and the other free Apaches, taken on March 25 and 26, are the only known photographs taken of American Indians while still at war with the United States. Fly coolly posed his subjects, asking them to move and turn their heads and faces, to improve his composition. The popular publication Harper's Weekly published six of his images in their April 24, 1886 issue.
In 1887, flash powder was invented, enabling journalists such as Jacob Riis to photograph informal subjects indoors, which led to the landmark 1890 book How the Other Half Lives. By 1897, it became possible to reproduce halftone photographs on printing presses running at full speed.
In France, agencies such as Rol, Branger and Chusseau-Flaviens syndicated photographs from around the world to meet the need for timely new illustration. Despite these innovations, limitations remained, and many of the sensational newspaper and magazine stories in the period from 1897 to 1927 were illustrated with engravings. In 1921, the wirephoto made it possible to transmit pictures almost as quickly as news itself could travel.
Golden age
The "Golden Age of Photojournalism" is often considered to be roughly the 1930s through the 1950s. It was made possible by the development of the compact commercial 35mm Leica camera in 1925, and the first flash bulbs between 1927 and 1930, which allowed the journalist true flexibility in taking pictures.File:Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung 01.jpg|thumb|left|upright=0.9|The Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung pioneered modern photojournalism and was widely copied. Pictured, the cover of issue of 26 August 1936: a meeting between Francisco Franco and Emilio Mola.
A new style of magazine and newspaper appeared that used photography more than text to tell stories. The Berliner Illustrirte Zeitung was the first to pioneer the format of the illustrated news magazine. Beginning in 1901, it began to print photographs inside the magazine, a revolutionary innovation. In the successive decades, it was developed into the prototype of the modern news magazine.
It pioneered the photo-essay, had a specialised staff and production unit for pictures and maintained a photo library. It also introduced the use of candid photographs taken with the new smaller cameras.
The magazine sought out reporters who could tell a story using photographs, notably the pioneer sports photographer Martin Munkácsi, the first staff photographer, and Erich Salomon, one of the founders of photojournalism.
Other magazines included, Arbeiter-Illustrierte-Zeitung, Vu, Life, Look, Picture Post ); and newspapers, The Daily Mirror and The New York Daily News. Famous photographers of the era included Robert Capa, Romano Cagnoni, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White and W. Eugene Smith.
Henri Cartier-Bresson is held by some to be the father of modern photojournalism, although this appellation has been applied to various other photographers, such as Erich Salomon, whose candid pictures of political figures were novel in the 1930s.
The photojournalism of, for example, Agustí Centelles played an important role in the propaganda efforts of the Republican side in the Spanish Civil War in the late 1930s.
File:Lange-MigrantMother02.jpg|thumb|upright=0.75|In Migrant Mother Dorothea Lange produced the seminal image of the Great Depression. The FSA also employed several other photojournalists to document the depression.
American journalist Julien Bryan photographed and filmed the beginning of the Second World War being under heavy German bombardment in September 1939 in Poland. He was pioneer worker in color photography, Kodachrome.
William Vandivert photographed in color the German bombardment of London called the Blitz in 1940.
Soldier Tony Vaccaro is also recognized as one of the pre-eminent photographers of World War II. His images taken with the modest Argus C3 captured horrific moments in war, similar to Capa's Spanish soldier being shot. Capa himself was on Omaha Beach on D-Day and captured pivotal images of the conflict on that occasion. Vaccaro is also known for having developed his own images in soldier's helmets, and using chemicals found in the ruins of a camera store in 1944.
Until the 1980s, most large newspapers were printed with turn-of-the-century "letterpress" technology using easily smudged oil-based ink, off-white, low-quality "newsprint" paper, and coarse engraving screens. While letterpresses produced legible text, the photoengraving dots that formed pictures often bled or smeared and became fuzzy and indistinct. In this way, even when newspapers used photographs well — a good crop, a respectable size — murky reproduction often left readers re-reading the caption to see what the photo was all about. The Wall Street Journal adopted stippled hedcuts in 1979 to publish portraits and avoid the limitations of letterpress printing. Not until the 1980s did a majority of newspapers switch to "offset" presses that reproduce photos with fidelity on better, whiter paper.
By contrast Life, one of America's most popular weekly magazines from 1936 through the early 1970s, was filled with photographs reproduced beautifully on oversize 11×14-inch pages, using fine engraving screens, high-quality inks, and glossy paper. Life often published a United Press International or Associated Press photo that had been first reproduced in newspapers, but the quality magazine version appeared to be a different photo altogether. In large part because their pictures were clear enough to be appreciated, and because their name always appeared with their work, magazine photographers achieved near-celebrity status. Life became a standard by which the public judged photography, and many of today's photo books celebrate "photojournalism" as if it had been the exclusive province of near-celebrity magazine photographers.
In 1947, a few famous photographers founded the international photographic cooperative Magnum Photos. In 1989, Corbis Corporation and in 1995 Getty Images were founded. These powerful image libraries sell the rights to photographs and other still images.