Good photojournalism is vital in the modern world

 

It is said that a picture paints a thousand words, and in the case of photojournalism that is most definitely true. Without reading the accompanying facts in reams of text, the public is usually able to recognize an important moment in history, and identify with key emotions through the power of the images used. Readers of newspapers, magazines, and online columns, and viewers of televised news broadcasts around the world are subjected to thousands of images each day. Only echoes of the most powerful are felt, though, and endure through history.

The importance of photojournalism

Photographs are an integral part of journalism; a visual hook that will draw readers, and viewers, into that particular moment in history, and be remembered long after the accompanying words have fallen out of sight, and memory.

Photojournalism is a means of capturing some of the most iconic moments of all time and ensuring they are never forgotten, and images can instantly make, or break, a big story. Emotive, informative, sometimes disturbing, but always powerful, the pictures that accompany history’s biggest moments ensure that a story is told, received and remembered by the masses.

The most famous instances of photojournalism are those that reflect a particular social, or political, moment in history: an image that is instantly identifiable, immediately relatable, and conjures a story without any words.

Alfred Eisenstaedt’s iconic photograph of a young American sailor embracing a woman in Times Square has become one of the world’s most recognizable wartime images, as it came to symbolize the jubilation felt at the end of World War II. Mirroring the tragedies experienced during the Vietnam War, meanwhile, is Nick Ut’s devastating picture of children fleeing a napalm strike in 1972; those who were born long after the event can still identify with the heartbreak felt in that single moment. Without political agenda or social comment Sam Shere’s 1937 photograph of the Hindenburg Disaster captured the fragility of human life, as well as an end to passenger-carrying airships, while Kevin Carter moved the world in 1993 when he shot the now-iconic picture of a Sudanese child watched over by a vulture. None of these images need explanation, yet all tell a story more complex than words could.

The power of an image

More recent images to have captured the world’s imagination, and admiration, include photographs taken at the moment President Obama and his national security team learned of Osama Bin Laden’s death, photographs depicting the aftermath of numerous, worldwide, terrorist events, and snapshots of the devastation left behind by disease and famine in some of the world’s poorest areas. While often difficult to view, and process, they have become a part of this generation’s story. Now available via editorial photography agencies, and as free stock images from Dreamstime and similar companies, these images will always be reproduced and remembered, for years, and events, to come.

Each these photographs has its own story and agenda, but all will be remembered long after the moment has passed; these are the photographs that will ensure today’s stories become tomorrow’s history, and for that, photojournalism should be heralded and respected.

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