History of Photojournalism

"Going Home", photo by Ed Clark, April 13, 1945  "Going Home" is an image that centers emotion in its scene. It has a very obvious main subject in the man with the accordion crying in the foreground, which in turn brings his sadness to the forefront of the focus of the image. He is relatively close to the camera compared to the other people in the background which makes him appear larger, in addition with his accordion which together have him take up around 2/3rds of the entire frame. The focus on the man and his emotions is also elevated by the choice of background. First of all is the contrast, with the man being African-American and thus darkskinned in a dark suit, placed with a bright white pillar directly behind him. It sharpens the overall contrast which helps guide the eye to his face, where is where the focus of the scene is intended to be, because it's the darkest area in what is otherwise a large section of a solidly white strip of the background. Seco...

In 2011, Italian photojournalist Alessio Mamo traveled to India for what would be his second time to collaborate with an Indian organization on a project. This project took him to the Indian states of Madhya Pradesh and Uttar Pradesh, where he met with some villagers of the area. After getting to know those villagers he spoke to, Mamo explained to them the idea behind his project. It required volunteers, of which Mamo found among the people he had just established friendly relations with. The set was prepared, with the villagers who had agreed to be volunteers excited to be photographed and participate in such a project. On July 22nd of 2018, five of the photos in Mamo's project, titled "Dreaming Food", were posted to the World Press Photo Instagram account. The backlash was immediate. But what even was "Dreaming Food" in the first place? According to Mamo himself in his statement about his project after-the-fact, he "...was obsessed by the food thrown awa...

Photograph of Victoria Ivleva by Victoria Ivleva Victoria Markovna Ivleva-York is a Russian photojournalist and activist that was born in Saint Petersburg, Russia. Very little else is known about her early life, which might be due to privacy reasons considering she is still alive and active today. At some point, she moved from Saint Petersburg to Moscow, where she would graduate from the Journalism Department of Moscow State University. As well as being a photojournalist, Ivleva is also an activist. She has traveled extensively within and outside the then-Soviet Union, from Central Asia to Africa, to photograph people being affected by disaster or violence. On April 26th, 1986, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster occurred. Ivleva, who had been in Chernobyl just  days after the accident, returned a couple years later on January 1st, 1991, as the first journalist to photograph the destroyed fourth reactor. According to her own statement on RFERL.org , " ...she was able to enter the four...

  Photo by Madeline Jacyszn, 10/23/23   Photo by Madeline Jacyszn, 10/23/23 Photo by Madeline Jacyszn, 10/23/23 This is a pop-up collage displaying the effects of red-tagging on photojournalists. Red-tagging is when a journalist has been branded as a member or an associate of an enemy party of the government, leading to blacklisting and harassment of the journalist in the hopes of stifling their work. This topic is of interest to me because red-tagging is a problem in the Philippines, my mom’s country, where photojournalists will be branded as terrorists or communists so the government has a public excuse to kill them. It is also particularly insidious for photojournalists due to economic circumstances, since the job market is still recovering from the pandemic and Filipino photojournalists must contend with lacking compensation for their work. Specifically, my collage is depicting a photojournalist who is being hunted after being red-tagged, as shown by the red paper I used t...

 Innovation is inevitable, and the field of photojournalism is no exception. The advancements in general photography made in the pre-digital age were mainly characterized by making the camera sleeker, the process to develop pictures less cumbersome, and expanding the range of subjects a camera was able to capture. What this meant for the field of photojournalism specifically was that the ability to be at least a citizen photojournalist was increasingly accessible, and all photojournalists enjoyed the benefits of more streamlined equipment with expanded abilities that allowed them to cover more dynamic events. However, this is not to imply that innovation in this field stopped once it moved to the digital age. If anything, it merely shifted because there was another element to contend with: computers. Uploading photographs to a computer through various methods is a more modern focus for camera innovation compared to the advancements in the pre-digital age, but given the high degree ...

Photo by Charles Shepherd, 1865 Background compliments composition - The background as well as the magicians in the foreground are very symmetrical, while the dancer is asymmetrical. She is off-center and caught in an asymmetrical pose while surrounded by the very symmetrical elements of the two columns and the bits of wall behind them. It creates another level of contrast beyond just values, because the eye is also drawn to the contrast of the asymmetry of the dancer against such a symmetrical background. The elements of the columns and how the dancer is still caught within them also creates a framing effect that's better suited to be discussed in use of lines but is still relevant here. Use of lines - The lines the columns in the background make almost perfectly splits the photograph into vertical thirds. While the main subject, the dancer, is not quite on one of the vertical third lines created by the columns, her left arm is which helps guide the eye to the rest of her. The par...