Photojournalism
differs from other documentary photography in that its purpose is to tell
a particular story in visual terms. One of the foremost of all photojournalists
is Henri Cartier-Bresson, who since 1930 has worked to document what he
calls the "decisive moment." His belief is that the dynamics
in any given situation eventually reach a peak, at which time a photograph
will capture the most powerful image possible. Sensing ahead of time that
exact peak moment to trip the shutter is a technique of which Cartier-Bresson
is a master; technological advances in the 1930s in equipment (notably
improvements in small cameras such as the Leica) and in film sensitivity
facilitated such recording of instantaneous vision. Many of Cartier-Bresson's
images are as strong in design as they are in emotion and are considered
fine art, photojournalism, and documents simultaneously.
Another French
photojournalist, the Hungarian-born Brassaï, was also committed to
recording the fleeting expressive moment-in his case, the more provocative
side of Parisian nightlife. His photographs were collected and published
as Paris de nuit (1933).
The American
war correspondent Robert Capa began his career photographing the Spanish
civil war; like Cartier-Bresson, he was interested in recording the impact
on civilians as well as battle scenes. Capa also covered the landing of
U.S. troops in Europe on D-day in World War II, and the war between the
French and the Indochinese, during which, in 1954, he was killed. More
recently, the English photographer Donald McCullin (1935- ) produced a
powerful indictment of war. His images of battle and its effects are collected
in The Destruction Business (1971) and Is Anyone Taking Any Notice?
(1973).
In the late 1930s
such pictorial magazines as Life and Look in the U.S. and
Picture Post in England were established; these publications featured
photographic essays with text based on and subordinate to the pictures.
This widely popular form is particularly associated with Life's great
staff photographers Margaret Bourke-White and W. Eugene Smith; an example
of Bourke-White's work now recognized as an important American historical
document is an 11-page spread devoted to life in Muncie, Ind. These magazines
went on to provide extensive photographic coverage of World War II and
the Korean War, with pictures taken by Bourke-White, Capa, Smith, David
Douglas Duncan (1916- ), and several other American photojournalists. Subsequently,
using photographs to bring about social change-like Riis before him-Smith
documented the horrible effects of mercury poisoning in Minamata, a Japanese
fishing village contaminated by leakage from a local industrial plant.
Two documentary photographers who have produced extraordinarily expressive
works are Ernest Cole (1940-90), whose House of Bondage (1967) explores
the miseries of the apartheid system, and the Czechoslovakian Josef Koudelka
(1938- ), noted for his splendidly composed narrative pictures of Eastern
Europe's Gypsies.
