photographs. With new technology in place, innovation was inevitable.
Soon sequences of integrated texts and images, designed to capture and
guide the eye, were common methods of presenting current events of social,
cultural, and political import.
While photojournalism (though not officially referred to as such)
had been practiced since 1855 , when Roger Fenton made history
photographing the Crimean War, the ability to reproduce photographs was
really possible only after 1880 , when Stephen H. Horgan’s invention of the
halftone was tested at the New York Daily Graphicand ultimately improved
upon by the New York Times. Moreover, prior to 1880 , cameras were so large
and heavy that they impeded candid or spot news coverage. That is, until
the Eastman Kodak Company reduced the camera to a little box, which
launched a huge amateur photography fad in Europe and America (and
encouraged publication of amateur photography magazines). These pictures
were often informal; they were the turn-of-the-century equivalent of
Polaroid’s instant pictures in the 1960 s and of digital snaps today—
immediate photographic gratification.
Professionally speaking, the most important technological advance
occurred in Germany after World War I. In 1925 , two compact cameras,
the Ermanox and the Leica, were marketed to professional shooters.
These cameras made unobtrusive photography possible while providing an
excellent negative for crisp reproduction. The Leica was the first small
camera to use a “roll” of film (actually, standard motion-picture film) and
was fitted with interchangeable lenses and a range finder. The Ermanox
was equally efficient, although it used small glass plates, which were soon
superseded by film. The small camera became merely an extra appendage,
freeing the shooter to make quick judgments.
One of the chief beneficiaries of this new technology was the
weekly Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung, then the most progressive of the early
picture magazines, whose photographers elevated candid photography to
high art and viable journalism.BIZcaptured the artistic tumult and
political turmoil of the 1920 s and bore witness to extraordinary global
events in a way unlike any other picture magazine. Its photographers—
precursors of the now-pesky paparazzi—reveled in shooting candid poses
of the famous and infamous. And in concert with a new breed of “photo”
editor they set standards for the picture magazine built on what
photographer Erich Salomon called Bildjournalismus, or photojournalism.
In the decades that followed,BIZwas a model for imitators and a point of
departure for innovators.
Erich Salomon fathered the candid news picture for BIZand
dubbed himself “photojournalist.” Although a lawyer by profession, once he
tuis.
(Tuis.)
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