Photogravure
Margaret Bowke-White, in You Have Seen Th eir
Faces (1937), portrayed the conditions in the
South of the US, in particular the negro chain-
gangs. Suppression of the photo-reportage of
Bert Hardy from the Korean War (1950–53) by
the proprietors of Picture Post led to the resigna-
tion of the magazine’s outstanding editor, Tom
Hopkinson.
Talented, fearless and concerned photo-
journalists continue to the present, even in the
age of TV and the closure of photo-papers. Don
McCullin has photo-reported war, oppression,
hardship and carnage all over the world in a
vast array of unforgettable images. He was,
incidentally, one of the photographers refused
permission by the Ministry of Defence to cover
the Falklands War (1982).
In A Concise History of Photography (Th ames
& Hudson, 1965; 3rd edition by Helmet, 1986),
Helmet and Alison Gernsheim write, ‘No other
medium can bring life and reality so close as
does photography and it is in the fi elds of report-
age and documentation that photography’s most
important contribution lies in modern times.’
Not the least of their achievements, photography
and photo-journalism have proved powerful
agents in the awakening of social conscience.
Th ey place images in the collective conscious-
ness which resonate across cultures and time.
Examples are Joe Rosenthal’s picture of marines
raising the Stars and Stripes at Iwo-Jima; Nick
Ut’s image of the Vietnamese girl, her shoulders
burning with napalm; and Eddie Adams’s photo-
graph of an offi cer executing a Vietcong prisoner
with a pistol to the head.
Photo-journalism records images that people
prefer not to see; images that upset and depress.
At the same time there are powerful arguments
that photograph serves as an antidote to war and
violence. Loup Langton in Photojournalism and
To d a y’s N e w s (Wiley-Blackwell, 2008) writes:
‘Visual images inform people about the world
and about life in ways that words cannot. And
the best images can motivate people to work
towards a better world.’
In his preface to a Committee to Protect Jour-
nalists (CPJ) report, ‘Attacks on the press, 2009’,
Fareed Zakaria writes: ‘Unable to aff ord foreign
bureaus, more newspapers and magazines are
relying on freelancers abroad. Th ese stringers
look just as suspicious to dictators and military
groups – and they are distinctively more vulner-
able.’ Photographers have ranked among the 847
journalists killed worldwide between 1992 and- Zakaria points out that as ‘publications
and TV networks continue to shed staff and
and coupling components were simultaneously
introduced by Kodak and Agfa. In 1935, Koda-
chrome, created by two American amateurs,
Leopold Godowsky and Leopold Mannes, was
marketed, a year ahead of Agfacolor. In both,
transparencies were obtained suitable for projec-
tion as well as reproduction. Electronic flash
was invented in 1931 by Harold E. Egerton. See
camera, origins; filmless camera; high-
speed photography; photo-journalism;
photomontage; time-lapse photography.
See also topic guide under media history.
Photogravure Engraving by photography, for
purposes of printing, was invented by English-
man William Henry Fox Talbot (1800–77) in
- It was not until 1947 that the fi rst machine
to do a complete typesetting job by means of
photography was invented.
Photo-journalism Despite the popularity of
photography among the general public, the press
were curiously slow to realize the possibilities
of photographs. Th e Daily Mirror was fi rst in
the fi eld in the UK at the turn of the twentieth
century, but the use of photographs did not
become commonplace till the end of the First
World War (1914–18). In June 1919, the New York
Illustrated Daily News at last fully acknowledged
a vital means of communication thirty-nine
years after the feasibility of printing a half-tone
block (reproducing light and shade by dots of
different sizes and densities) alongside type
had been demonstrated by Stephen H. Horgan
in the New York Daily Graphic. It was not until
the 1920s that photo-journalism in the modern
sense began, with the introduction of the
Ermanox camera and ultra-rapid plates.
Among the fathers of photo-journalism were
Erich Saloman, Felix H. Man and Wolfgang
Weber. With a camera hidden in his top hat,
Arthur Barrett secretly took court photographs
of the suffragettes, and, in February 1928,
Saloman took sensational pictures of a Coburg
murder trial. Man pioneered the picture story in,
for example, A Day in the Life of Mussolini, 1934,
and it was Man who founded Weekly Illustrated
in the same year. He became chief photographer
for Picture Post, founded in 1938, a position he
held until 1945.
Photo-journalism was given increasing status
over the years by many outstanding photogra-
phers. Henri Cartier-Bresson photo-reported
visits to Spain (1933) and Mexico (1934); Robert
Capa won undying fame with his war photog-
raphy, especially his pictures taken during
the Spanish Civil War (1936–9); Bill Brandt
photographed the English at Home (1936) while