The combination of photography and journalism is known as
photojournalism. The term was coined by Frank Luther Mott, historian and dean
of the University Of Missouri School Of Journalism. Photojournalism is a form
of journalism that uses images in order to tell a news story. It is now usually
understood to refer only to still images, but in some cases the term also
refers to video used in broadcast journalism. Photos used for journalistic
purpose must have timeliness and objectivity. They must be narrative too.
1920-1990 The beginning of modern photojournalism took place
in 1925, in Germany. The event was the invention of the first 35 mm camera, the
Leica. Before this, a photo of professional quality required bulky equipment.
With the invention of Leica, photographers could go just about anywhere and
take photos easily.
Added to this was another invention originally from Germany,
the photojournalism magazine. Editors and photographers begin to work together
to produce an actual story told by pictures and words, or cutlines. Germany’s
photo magazines established the concept, but Hitler’s rise to power in 1933 led
to suppression and persecution of most of the editors, who generally fled the
country. Many came to the United States.
During the Second World War, ‘Life’ launched Nov. 23. 1936,
was probably the most influential photojournalism magazine in the world. The
most dramatic pictures of the conflict came not so often from the newspapers as
from the weekly photojournalism magazines, photos that still are famous today.
Many began using handheld cameras made by Graflex camera company during the
1960’s; two have become legendary: the Speed Graphic, and later, Crown Graphic.
Successor to the Graphic by the 1950s was the 120-format
camera, usually a Rolleiflex, which provided greater mobility at the expense of
smaller negative size. You looked down into the ground-glass viewfinder. But in
newspapers, by the Vietnam War era, the camera of choice was the 35--film got
better, making the camera easier to use, and the ability to use telephone,
wide-angle, and later, zoom lenses made the 35 indispensable, as it still is to
most photojournalists today.
The golden age of photojournalism ranged from about 1935 to
1975. Television clearly had a huge impact--to be able to see things live was
even more powerful than a photo on paper. Even so, many of the photos we
remember so well, the ones that symbolized a time and a place in our world,
often were moments captured by still photography.
By the 1990's photojournalists gave up making actual prints,
but use computer technology to scan film directly into the design. And by the
beginning of the new millennium, photojournalists were no longer using film:
digital photography had become universal. Since it is both faster and cheaper
it fitted well in an industry preoccupied with both speed and profit. Colour
became the standard for “legacy media,” newspapers and magazines, as well as
for web news sites. Because colour printing technology requires a higher
quality image, photojournalists have had to adapt their methods to accept fewer
available light images.
Earlier we used analog cameras which use film as recording
medium. Now we have digital cameras which use digital sensors instead of film
and flash cards as storage medium. Today’s cameras use glass lenses to focus
and capture light much more quickly and to allow us to magnify images. Today’s
cameras also have shutters that control the light from reaching the film or
sensor with the touch of a button and have powerful flashes to help illuminate
scenes. The camera has come a long way from its humble beginnings, but it is
still just a box that controls the amount of light that reaches a piece of
film.
In today’s world, photojournalism isn’t something that is
heard or spoken of much anymore. With the Internet providing us with places
such as YouTube, Deviant Art, and other online sources created just for sharing
amateur photography, it’s really no surprise that photojournalism is slowly
becoming a dying form of art as well as media.
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