Photojournalism: History and Practice

 This page is created as a resource for students studying Photojournalism History and Practice using open sources.
Content in development.

Roger Fenton - The Crimean War

Roger Fenton is often cited as one of the first photographers to take a camera into the field to cover war.

He produced a relatively small catalogue of photos depicting the Crimean War, which took place between 1853 and 1856. His work was captured during four months of the war in 1855. Today the future of Crimea is one of the issues at stake in the current war between Russia and Ukraine.

Fenton aspired to be a painter, but at some point decided his talent was not sufficient to make a living as an artist. It is believed he may have been introduced to photography as a means of assisting the process of painting. A British publishing house hired Fenton to sail to Crimea to photograph the war. The details of this arrangement are available in the source material linked below.

In addition to his early, very bulky camera, Fenton converted a carriage into a mobile darkroom that would allow him to develop his images in the field. Because cameras of the day were so large, and the process of making a photograph required long exposures, Fenton was not able to photograph combat scenes, or even scenes that occurred right after a battle. Nevertheless, Fenton’s work is considered to be among the first attempts to use photography to document war.

Background on Roger Fenton and the Crimean War - The U.S. Library of Congress(Includes images)

This photo, known as the Valley of the Shadow of Death, was taken after a battle during the Crimean War. The existence of a similar photo, with fewer cannonballs on the road itself, has led some to question whether Fenton manipulated this photo by moving cannonballs on or off the road. Film maker Errol Morris produced an entire film and book on the controversy.

Whether Fenton manipulated the photo or not, the controversy illustrates the push and pull over the ethics of photojournalism.

Are photojournalists responsible only to simply record the world as they see it, or are they allowed to use the tools or approach of an artist in service of showing a larger truth?

Is a camera simply a tool used to record reality, or is it a tool used to turn reality into art?

Mathew Brady - American Civil War

Mathew Brady was an accomplished portrait photographer in the mid-1800s in New York City and Washington, D.C.

When the U.S. Civil War began he decided to put together a group of photographers to record the war by bringing cameras onto the battlefield. As the organizer of the effort, the resulting photos are often credited to him: Brady Photograph or Photograph by Brady. He however did not take most of the photos. Brady had up to twenty photographers in the field and he also purchased photos made by others who were independently taking pictures of events in different parts of the country.

The photo at the start of this entry was taken by Alexander Gardner, a Brady associate. It is considered one of the most important photographs of the war, because when it was published, it was the first time the American public could witness - through photography - the horrors of battle.

Mathew Brady - U.S. Library of Congress

Alexander Gardner - American Battefield Trust

Gardner is credited with taking the last photo portrait of former President Abraham Lincoln. There is disagreement over when the photo was taken. Either in February of the year he died, or just a few days before the assassination.

A crack in the original negative is responsible for the line going across the top of the photograph and through Lincoln’s head. Following the assassination, some saw the cracked negative as an omen of what was to come.

Mathew Brady’s role in organizing a group of photographers to document an on-going war is considered a breakthrough in photojournalism and created a template for the future of use of photography in the coverage of war.

Civil War Images - The American Experience - PBS

CivilWarPhotography.org

Derivative work
Sally Mann

Sally Mann is a contemporary photographer who often uses glass plate negatives to make images of her subjects.

In her work, the imperfection of the prints and the open acknowledgement of interaction between glass, chemicals, and light is all part of the story she is attempting to tell.

One of Mann’s many acclaimed projects is titled: Battlefields. She visited several Civil War battlefields and photographed them as they are today using the photographic techniques of the Civil War era. The result is a series of dreamlike photos that invite the viewer to travel back in time, or to feel the ghosts of the men who fought on these grounds more than 100 years ago.

SallyMann.com

Q: Is Sally Mann’s work photojournalism, art, or something else?

Robert Capa
(1913-1954)

Robert Capa is perhaps the best known war photographer of the first half of the 20th century. He began his career in Paris in the 1930s, worked alongside many successful photographers of the era, made a name for himself covering the Spanish Civil War and went on to cover World War II. He was a founding member of Magnum, a cooperative photo agency that supplied photos to publications around the world. He was killed when he stepped on a land mine while covering the French war in Vietnam in 1954.

His most famous photo is the one at the top of this post showing the death of a loyalist soldier during the Spanish Civil War. The photo has been the subject of debate for decades, not because of its gruesome nature, but because some critics believe the photo was staged. There has been no evidence offered of this claim and Capa himself acknowledged the chance involved in taking a photo at this precise moment, but he stood by the authenticity of the picture.

There is no doubt that Capa inspired many who followed him in the field of photojournalism. Many of his World War II photos would serve as inspiration to American photographers who began their careers covering the Vietnam War in the 1960s and 1970s. Those Vietnam era photographers then inspired many of the photojournalists covering conflicts today.

Capa’s brother Cornell went on to found the International Center for Photography in New York City in his brother’s memory.

Robert Capa Profile - International Center for Photography

Capa Selected Works - Magnum Photos

Capa’s photograph of U.S. troops advancing on the beaches of Normandy, France on D-Day in World War II demonstrates his belief in getting as close to the action as possible. He was quoted as saying “if your photographs aren’t good enough you are not close enough.” His use of a hand held 35mm camera - which is still the standard today - allowed him and photographers of his era to get close and not waste time with camera set up.

This has become an iconic photo of World War II, but if Capa had a choice it is possible it would have never been published. His film was damaged in transit from the front lines to his photo editor and this blurry image was one of only a few that were considered worthy of publication. The motion blur in the photo makes it more effective and communicates the chaos of war and the desperation of a soldier in battle.

David Seymour
1911 - 1956

Along with Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and others, David Seymour was a co-founder of Magnum Photos and ran the co-operative for twenty years after Capa’s death. Known as “Chim”(pronounced Shim), began working as a freelance photographer for European magazines in around 1933. Like others of his era, he photographed the Spanish Civil War, World War II, and the aftermath of WW II.

In his work you can see a technique that he borrows from portraiture, asking his subjects to look directly into the lens of the camera. This is not the technique used in most candid photography, war photography, or even street photography, but it is very effective and does nothing to diminish the story-telling aspect of the photo. Because we are making eye contact with the subject, the technique humanizes the person being photographed. It is harder to look away, it is easier to feel empathy.

Later in his career Seymour did more formal portraiture work of political leaders and entertainment figures.

He died in 1956 while working on a story about a prisoner exchange near the Suez Canal. He was hit by Egyptian machine gun fire.

David “Chim” Seymour - Biography and Work - Magnum Photos

Chim - Humanist Photography - National Gallery of Art

Margaret Bourke-White
1904-1971

Margaret Bourke-White became interested in photography after taking a course at a photography school while she was attending Columbia University.

She graduated a few years later from Cornell University with a degree in biology, but was hooked on photography and soon opened her own studio in Cleveland. Most of her early work was centered around industrial photography. That work caught the attention of Henry Luce, the founder of TIME Magazine, Fortune, and later LIFE magazine. She was the first photographer hired for Fortune in 1929. Between 1929 and 1957 she was a leading photographer of her time, traveling internationally, covering World War II, and completing a number of long term projects in parts of the world inaccessible to most. The projects include:

First photographer hired for LIFE magazine

World War II and Europe

The German invasion of Moscow

Traveled with General George Patton through Germany

The liberation of German concentration camps

Ghandi and the fight for independence in India

Unrest in South Africa

The Korean War

In the final decades of her life, Bourke-White lived in Connecticut. First in Darien and later in Stamford. She was diagnosed with Parkinson’s Disease in 1953 and her last major work was published in 1957. She died in Stamford Hospital in 1971.

Resources:

Margaret Bourke-White -Biography - International Center for Photography

Biography and Images - Museum of Modern Art

The Photography of Margaret Bourke-White - The Atlantic(subscription may be required)

Dorothea Lange
1895 - 1965

Dorothea Lange was studying to be a teacher when she was introduced to photography in 1913. Three years later, after studying at the Clarence H. White School of Photography, she moved to San Francisco and opened a portrait studio. In addition to her studio work, she began photographing life on the streets of San Francisco. A genre that today we often refer to as “street photography.” There is a connection between street photography and documentary photography in terms of technique. One major difference between the two is that a street photographer is not always tied to one subject matter, where as a documentary photographer is usually hunting for images that illustrate a specific story line.

In 1939, she collaborated with her husband on a book called “An American Exodus,” inspired by the story she discovered while photographing street life.

Much of her best known work was financed by the Farm Security Administration(FSA), which was a federal government agency set up during the Great Depression along with the Works Progress Administration(WPA), to provide financial aid to farmers and to put people to work on public works projects - like building roads and bridges. Lange was hired to photograph the work of these government programs.

The photo leading off this section is known as “Migrant Mother.” It was made at a migrant camp in California in 1936. Lange took several pictures of this woman and her children, but the one above is the one she selected for publication. It has become an iconic image of suffering in the United States during the Depression.

Another major project Lange photographed for the FSA was the incarceration of Japanese Americans in California following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. This assignment put her at odds with those running the FSA because they hoped to use the photos to show the success of the program. Lange, and other photographers - including Ansel Adams - did not see it that way. They saw the incarceration program as inhumane and morally wrong. Lange photographed the story from that perspective and many of her photos were not published until after the war.

Dorothea Lange died of cancer in 1965. In the last year of her life she worked on a retrospective of her work which opened in 1966 at the Museum of Modern Art. Her husband, donated her negatives and about 6,000 prints to the Oakland Museum of California.

Dorothea Lange Digital Archive - Oakland Museum of California

Dorothea Lange Biography - International Center for Photography

Ansel Adams
1902 - 1984

Ansel Adams is perhaps the best known American photographer of the last 100 years and the image at the top of this post - Moon and Half Dome - is perhaps his most famous photograph.

Adams is known best for his black and white photographs of the American west. Throughout his career he used his work to advocate for environmental causes, including the expansion of the U.S. National Park system. His work on that issue in this country influenced the development of national parks in other countries.

He was the founder of a group of photographers known as the F/64 group. They practiced a form they called “pure” photography which included sharply focused images from front to back. He is also given credit for something called the “zone system,” which is an approach to exposure and the developing of photographs in a manner that captured the full range of light within a photo.

Ansel Adams Gallery - AnselAdams.com

Ansel Adams Legacy - CBS Sunday Morning

The reason I have included him in this selection of important photojournalists is because, like Dorothea Lange, he spent the early part of his career working for the Farm Security Administration(FSA). Many of his earliest images can be accessed through the U.S. Library of Congress, because they were taxpayer funded, therefore they are public property, not private property.

Like Lange, he was assigned to cover the incarceration of Japanese Americans in California following the bombing of Pearl Harbor. Like Lange, he found the policy offensive and tried to capture the injustice of the policy rather than make an attempt to justify it through photography.

Ansel Adams Japanese Relocation Photos - U.S. Library of Congress

The photo of the Manzanar Relocation Center in Califoria is one of many taken by Adams on behalf of the FSA.

In this photo you can see Adams’s attraction to the landscape as well as the primary subject. You can also see how both he and Lange thought it was important to capture the architecture of the camps to help the audience understand the ramifications of the policy. Many of the relocation camp photos taken by Lange and Adams focus on the behavior of those being held in the camps. Even though they had been unjustly removed from their communities, they continue to believe in the promise of the United States and follow its rules. They never wavered from their general “good citizenship.”

Moonrise, Hernandez, New Mexico - Museum of Modern Art

The photo known as Moonrise, clearly illustrates the zone system at work. Notice the detail from the foreground of the image all the way to the most distance point.

Lee Miller
1907-1977

Lee Miller is an interesting photographer who began her career as a fashion model. In fact, we could say she began her career modeling for her father who was an amateur photographer.

In 1929 she moved to Paris, France and began working with the surrealist photographer and artist Man Ray. She soon broke away from his studio and opened her own studio in Paris. She moved back to the United States, opened a studio in New York, then married an Egyptian businessman and moved to Cairo, where she moved away from portrait studio work and began photographing her world from a general perspective.

As the start of World War II approached she moved to Europe, worked with British Vogue - at first as an assistant - and eventually as a freelance photographer and writer. She was one of a few women credentialed by the U.S. government to photograph the war. The government understood that it was important to reach a female audience in order to maintain public support.

She covered many battles during the war, the liberation of concentration camps, and the aftermath of fighting. Some of her best known images include photos of Nazi officers who committed suicide rather than face justice for war crimes and a self-portrait taken in collaboration with fellow photographer David Scherman of Lee Miller in one of Hitler’s bathtubs. She and Scherman often worked and traveled together. He was working for LIFE magazine.

After the war she returned to portrait photography of well known people like the artist Pablo Picasso.

Lee Miller Archives - United Kingdom

Lee Miller’s Second World War - Imperial War Museum(UK)

W. Eugene Smith
1918-1978

W. Eugene Smith was known for his long form photo essays that required months and sometimes years of work getting to know and getting close to his subjects.

One of his most well-known photo essays was titled “The Country Doctor” and was published by LIFE magazine in 1948. The image above is one of the most iconic photos from the collection.

Smith had a reputation for being stubborn about his approach to his work and some editors refused to work with him.

He began his photography career in high school, working for local papers in Kansas. He then worked for Newsweek and LIFE in the years just before and during World War II.

In 1971, Smith began work on a long-term project in the town of Minamata, Japan. For years a chemical plant had been dumping mercury into a local bay. Both the company and the government denied it was happening and denied that mercury poisoning in the bay had anything to do with the high number of deaths and birth defects in the community. Eventually, both the company and the government admitted wrong-doing and Smith’s photo essay on the subject was published as a “warning to the world” about the effects of industrial pollution.

W. Eugene Smith - Magnum Photos

“Tomoko in Bath” is one of the best known photos from the Minanata photo essay. It portrays a mother bathing her child who was born with severe birth defects as a result of mercury poisoning.

W. Eugene Smith Biography and Archives - International Center for Photography

Carol Guzy
1956 -

Carol Guzy is an American photographer. She grew up in Pennsylvania and earned an associates degree in nursing before changing her career goals and studying photography at the Art Institute of Fort Lauderdale in Florida. She graduated in 1980.

After interning at the Miami Herald she was hired as a staff photographer and in 1988 got a job with the Washington Post. She stayed there until 2014 and for the last decade has been a freelance photojournalist.

She has reported from several war zones and has completed many projects that fall into the category known as “humanitarian journalism.”

The photo at the start of this post was taken in 1994 in Haiti. It pictures a U.S. soldier guarding a man from a mob who suspected him of throwing a grenade into a pro-democracy protest. The U.S. had troops in Haiti as part of a peace keeping mission. For this photo Guzy won one of her four Pulitzer Prizes.

Carol Guzy.com - Photos and Biography

Carol Guzy Wins Fourth Pulitzer - CBS News

Lynsey Addario
1973 -