Prominent Photographers
Tate Galleries Photojournalism
The decisive Moment Henri Cartier-Bresson
https://www.adobe.com/au/discover/photojournalism.html
https://www.tate.org.uk/art/art-terms/p/photojournalism
https://photographyicon.com/photojournalism/
https://www.theartstory.org/movement/photojournalism/
https://mymodernmet.com/photojournalism-history/
https://streetbounty.com/history-photojournalism/
Photojournalism started with 2 photographers; Carol Szathmari and Roger Fenton. These two carried their cameras and wagon-bound dark rooms to the front lines of the crimean war to record the horrors of war.
“Migrant Mother” 1936
Dorothea Lange
“Migrant Mother” shows a 32 year old mother and two of her children sitting in grief. The mother was an out-of-work pea picker that claims she and her seven children had been living off frozen vegetables and birds that the children killed. The crops she was tasked to pick had been frozen and destroyed by freezing rains.
https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/roadshow/stories/articles/2014/4/14/migrant-mother-dorothea-lange/
’The ruins of the holyrood chapel’ 1824
Louis Daguerre
History
Photojournalism is one of the most long standing movements in the history of photography, stretching from the invention of the camera, to the modern day where everyone is a photojournalist.
At the start of photography, cameras were only used to record reality in a split-second image, but soon enough photographers realised they could move the public with photos and warn them of war and the social injustices of the world. Throughout the Crimean war, WWI and WW2, into modern day wars in the Middle East, Asia and Ukraine, war photographers have existed on the front lines to convey the horrors of war in their body of work. During the great depression, famines, stolen generation, the civil rights movement, riots, modern day social movements; photojournalists have documented social injustice and corruption. Photojournalists have spread their message and meaning through the record of history.
Arts World
While photography wasn’t all that new anymore, photojournalism in the 1920s started to make its way to the front covers of newspapers and actually be used to spread news more efficiently.
Technology
Technology was advancing and the addition of a new Leica camera made it easier for photographers to capture images more freely and it gave them more movement and flexibility. Before the new Leica came out, cameras were bulky and didn’t allow that flexible mobility like the new camera did.
With the invention of smartphones, came a new awakening for the photojournalism movement. Every person on the street could capture a depiction of social injustice, they could spread the word about war and everyone would know. There are no longer photojournalists, the phrase lost it's meaning after everyone in the world could document history.
The emergence of digital technologies has also changed photojournalism,photo manipulation is a serious consideration. While war photography has a history of staged photos, especially due to historic limitations in technology, photojournalists work with the idea that scenes must not be staged or manipulated. With digital manipulation easier than ever, accuracy is a serious consideration. In fact, up to 20% of entries to World Press Photo are eliminated before the final round due to post-production or manipulation violations.