Monday, November 1, 2010

What Is the Role of Photojournalism?


Photojournalism plays a very important role in today’s society. With so many newsworthy events occurring around the world it is very important for readers to be able to see a picture accompanying the story.  This gives people a little more insight to what they are reading about, having a visual image makes the story more memorable. Westbrook reiterates this in his piece “A Brief History of Photojournalism”. “The incorporation of photographs into news reports is so ubiquitous that a story without photographs to a contemporary audience feels incomplete, as though they were only getting half the story.”(1)
Photojournalism has evolved a lot and this is due to the changes in technology. The meaning of photojournalism has been the same for throughout history; to augment the written word. In the 1970’s photojournalism was looked at as an art form and considered a great talent. Westbrook discusses the important of their work on society and how photographers like Don McCullin received a great deal of respect for their work. Photojournalism today has become very fast paced due to the high use of digital photography, instead of waiting for the perfect shot photographers can fire away at occurring events. The use of technology and digital photographs has opened up so many new mediums for photojournalism.

(July 1968 London Don Mccullin in the Beatle years)
(1)http://www.photography-schools.com/photojournalismhistory.htm.

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