What Makes Photojournalism Unique?
By Eleanor Williams
Photojournalism, one of the many materials that makes up
a news story. Photojournalism is a particular form of journalism that creates
images for the newspapers, magazines and many more news media’s that we read.
The idea is that the images used are there to give evidence, show off or inform
the reader and give a relevant picture
to the story. It began in 1880, where of course newspaper had already been
around for 30 odd years but now printing was made possible, therefore
newspapers filled up with images mainly of recent train wrecks and fire as the
subject. As technology grew images in the media started to take its toll and
began to branch of into different genre’s and be seen in almost every
paper or magazine read. Photojournalism
branched off into many different categories for example, Fashion, Portrait, Documentary,
Landscape, Scientific and many more.
One area of Photography and arguably one of the most
popular to this day is Fashion photojournalism. It’s main devotion is to
display current fashionable clothing, items and accessories. And can mostly be
found in advertisements or fashion magazines. It began in France, 1909, when halftone printing allowed
fashion photographs to be featured in magazines. Fashion photography first
appeared in La Mode, then became increasingly popular as it appeared in Vogue
magazine which is one of the most popular magazines to this day. Nowadays we
can see fashion photography in almost anything media related we read. Most
popular in fashion magazines such as Vanity Fair, Elle, or Cosmopolitan. There
is a big comparison in regular photojournalism and fashion photography. We see
photojournalism images as it is. The image can tell us a bit behind the story
being told and show evidence toward it to give truth. However we can mostly
find that in modern fashion photography images are often altered to make the
image more appealing for the reader. Therefore picking up the magazine it’s in
or buying the product shown. But this means that the image can often come off
as ‘fake’ looking to promote the products.
Another form of Photojournalism is Documentary
Photography. It may not be as obvious as fashion photography but Documentary photography
is around almost as much as it. In
almost any media we see documentary can be read and seen in images. Documentary
photography is used to show significant and historical events. We can usually
find it in professional photojournalism, real life reportage or even in an
amateur or artistic pursuit. Documentary photography first came around in the
19th century when archaeologist John Greene travelled to Nubia to
photography ruins of the region, it was then when it became more known of as
seen around a lot more. Now, documentary photography is a popular part of
journalism found in newspapers, magazines and on the internet worldwide.
Compared to Photojournalism, which mainly shows hard facts, Documentary
photography is mostly used to show in-depth, true to life images from what is happening all around
the world. It is such a popular genre because we can see ‘real life’ and it is
not altered to cover up truth.
The final example of photojournalism is Portrait
photography. Portrait photography is used to portray the expression,
personality and mood of the subject so in this case the person or group that
the photo will display. The focus of the photo is on the persons face even
though the entire body or background may be shown. Portrait photography began
virtually since the invention of the camera and has grown to be one of the most
popular forms of photography now. We can see it in almost any subject whether
it be fashion, scientific, or documentary. Modern day photography can also be
seen almost anywhere. Although portrait photography may be altered sometimes it
is used to show the feelings and personalities of the person in the photo. It
is not much similar to photojournalism as that is supposed to show fact and
evidence.
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