Photo Journalism

Photo journalism was started by a French painter/photographer named Henry Cartier-Bresson. It was started in 1933 when Henry Cartier-Bresson took a photograph of a man jumping over a puddle in Paris. The idea that photo journalism was based on the decisive moment, which is a split second in which you take a photo that captures the action of the scene (examples of which are below). Two other photographers that developed photographic journalism were Robert Capa and Tony Vaccaro. These journalists developed this during World War Two, taking photographs in the Battlefield. Robert Capa was a professional war photographer, who followed soldiers round capturing events. Whereas Tony Vaccaro, was a soldier, who carried a camera round, taking photos of the devastation as he went. Tony Vaccaro's photos were destroyed by the army because they contained images of dead G.I.s which the world was not yet ready to see. This new wave of journalism was captured by the new revolotionary camera the Leica, which was an expensive but improved camera. it was a camera that was poortable and could take quick shots as opposed to the old style of camera. The Leica camera changed the way photography was usually used for very set up images, and it now allowed it to be a quick precise picture that can capture an image in a split second.