Photojournalism is a key feature of print documentary. While it has a notable history, it continues to evolve and involve the newest media forms and technologies. The notes that follow are designed to explain some of the key features of its history and to show how changing audiences and convergence in media technologies have reinvigorated an area of media output that seemed to be in terminal decline. The article should be read while referring to some of the key images mentioned.
In order to understand photojournalism properly we should recognise how powerful and influential magazines and photography were before television became the ‘hot’ medium that is so pervasive in modern society.

Illustrated magazines
Between the two great world wars of the twentieth century it was the press, particularly magazines, which documented national and international culture, news events and trends. Some of the most famous magazines were Time, Newsweek and Life in the United States, Picture Post and Illustrated in the UK, and Paris Match and Stern in Europe. They all had an educational and documentary remit based on a combination of informative and entertaining writing with photography that was artistic as well as journalistic. Perhaps Life’s slogan best sums up their intentions: “To see life, to see the world; to witness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things.”
Several of these publications, such as Picture Post and Illustrated, failed to survive in a changing media environment. Others like Paris Match and Stern changed their mode of address to focus on entertainment rather than documentary. Life – which once sold 8 million copies per week, although it was later to fold – has reinvented itself as an insert supplied free with some newspapers.
The common feature of the surviving titles is their loyalty to high quality photojournalism as a core element of their output. You will find archive and source materials available on the Internet which show the range and depth of their coverage. It’s interesting to compare them with popular magazine titles of today such as OK! and Hello!. See the end piece for web addresses that refer to the key titles.

What is photojournalism?
Photojournalism attempts to document the important political and social issues that affect our world. It seeks to show these to a wide audience and to influence our awareness and understanding of events. You should try to familiarise yourself with a number of these events by researching some of the pictures that defined the power and the importance of the still image. You should also try to understand why the still image registers so strongly with us, even in an age when the moving image seems so dominant and ubiquitous.
One photograph you may encounter is Kim Phuc’s famous ‘girl in the photo’. This dramatic picture of a fleeing, naked child burned by napalm symbolised the suffering of the innocent in war and was credited with changing the public’s perspective on the war in Vietnam. Likewise, the famous ‘burnt soldier’ image from the first Iraq war shows the true nature of warfare in the form of an Iraqi soldier who was incinerated by a US bomb while fleeing Kuwait. Other enduring images include the assassination of President Kennedy in 1963; the first moon landing in 1969; the various images of Princess Diana and the images of the September 11 attacks on the Twin Towers.
Among the well-known photojournalists whose work you could investigate are Henri Cartier-Bresson, Roger Pic and Robert Capa. As you become more familiar with the concept of photojournalism you will note that the work of such photojournalists is not simply documentary. Issues of interpretation and artistry are an important part of their role and motivation. They do not see themselves as merely chronicling the great events and personalities of our time. As Cartier-Bresson once noted, “There’s no standard way of approaching a story. We have to evoke a situation, a truth. This is the poetry of life’s reality.” This artistry is evident in the fact that the vast majority of Cartier-Bresson’s work – and almost all his best images – are in black and white.
It was a desire to preserve the integrity of the still image that inspired Cartier-Bresson –together with Robert Capa, George Rodger and David Seymour – to set up Magnum Photos in 1947. Magnum has remained one of the world’s most prestigious photographic agencies ever since, supplying images to the press, publishers, advertising, television, galleries and museums across the world. They have a ‘living archive’ of one million photographs of which about a quarter are available online. You can view them by registering with Magnum at www.magnumphotos.com

Photojournalism today
The concept of photojournalism is alive and well today, but not always in the purest sense intended by Magnum’s founders. It has expanded to include lifestyle and celebrity agendas and to focus heavily on colour, with an emphasis on using pictures for decorative and illustrative functions. This is far removed from the serious images and lofty ideals of the original photojournalists who usually refused to be limited to one publication or to have any time constraints on the production of their work.
In fact, many of those who have sustained the original tradition of photojournalism have turned to other outlets for their work. Books, exhibitions and the Internet have provided new ways of displaying the photography of those wish to offer a more thoughtful – and in some cases, visionary – account of world events. But publications that fit the purists’ definition of photojournalism have struggled in recent years. Reportage was a recent UK magazine dedicated to showcasing the work of photographers interested in picture essays of the the world around them. It was short-lived in print form, but managed to survive by means of a reincarnation as a virtual publishing outlet on the net. A similar web site called foto8 also sustains the photojournalistic tradition. Its founder Jon Levy has launched a print version of the site to complement the freely-given, unabridged, picture essay work of a range of award-winning photojournalists.
This alliance of old and new media forms is an example of how the digital age has arrived in photography. Clearly the technology and the audience need to be matched to allow for a discourse of ideas and values, as well as economic survival (if not profitability).
Of course, new media refers not only to the Internet but also to devices such as mobile phones which combine text services with photos. Photojournalism will continue in conjunction wih the expanding mobile market but it will also operate at a more basic consumer level as mobile users make their own personalised stories for distribution to the chosen audiences they wish to address.
Sometimes the audience for picture messaging can become much larger than originally intended, as the recent ‘Prince Harry in Nazi uniform’ story shows. The mobile phone pictures of the Prince were splashed by the Sun whose reporter apparently stumbled across the offending image while checking a partygoer’s mobile phone for a much tamer fancy dress image of Prince William.
The old adage that “a picture is worth a thousand words” is endorsed by photojournalists. In many of today’s crisis situations they believe that their work can make a difference. Pictures can put a human face to tragedies and disasters that might otherwise be too complex or too overwhelming to fully comprehend. The mother who clung to a tree for two days before giving birth to baby Rosetta provided an iconic image of the Mozambique floods of 2000. Similarly ‘Little Ali’ shot to the forefront of public attention after he was pictured with severe burns and life-threatening injuries following a missile attack on his Baghdad home. This image was used to launch fundraising appeals for Ali and many of the other civilian victims of the war in Iraq.
The news agency Reuters has recognised the impact of such images and as a consequence has developed the AlertNet web site in partnership with the Red Cross. This site publicises humanitarian emergencies by making use of powerful images supplied by relief agencies. The hope is that countries affected by disaster and conflict can get useful media coverage from images taken by charity workers even where there is little presence from formal media organisations.
There is of course a great deal of national and local press and magazine coverage of events such as the recent Asian tsunami disaster. These stories, and the images that accompany them, have to break through the newsworthiness threshold in order to find space on the front page or even the inside pages. Many editors appear to think that today’s consumers don’t want too much serious news.
This partly explains our supposed obsession with celebrity and fame. This agenda drives much of the picture content of newspapers and magazines and it seems that we can’t get enough of the outrageous Osbournes or the beautiful Beckhams. Of the UK celebrity magazines, OK! sells some 530,000 copies per week and Hello! – with smaller circulation figures – claims a reach of 2.3 million adults in the UK, most of them women.
So where does this leave photojournalism in the modern media environment? It is unlikely to regain the influence it once had in the the early part of the 20th century when the press was the dominant medium. However, it has survived and reinvented itself to accommodate the emerging technologies, as well as retaining a role – though with a different emphasis – within the traditional newspaper and magazine industries. It is still an important part of media output and it continues to cling to an educational and informative mode of address that asks more of the reader/viewer.
Traditional photojournalism provokes questions and demands engagement with the text because it has a function beyond mere entertainment. It is often made by photographers with a social conscience, an artistic flair, an altruistic motive or, in the best examples, a combination of all three. In presenting his or her work to the reader/viewer the photojournalist assumes that the audience is active and open to change, and perhaps that the audience can instigate wider social and even political change at a local or global level. The media have a part to play in defining our world and it is gratifying to know that some media professionals actively seek to make our world a better place in which we feel some sense of belonging to a global community. And that is the rationale of true photojournalism.

© 2005 Gerry Connor

Web addresses for reference-:

www.magazine-group.co.uk/magazines
http://millionmagazines.com
www.life.com/Life/search/covers
www.hultonarchive.com
www.gettyimages.com
www.parismatch.com
www.mondotimes.com
www.ok.co.uk
www.hellomagazine.com
www.kimfoundation.com
www.henricartierbresson.org
www.magnumphotos.com
www.reportage.co.uk
www.foto8.com
www.alertnet.org
www.natmags.co.uk
http://pro.corbis.com