Photography as a media invention emerged in the early decades of the nineteenth century, over sixty years before that cluster of other communications technologies in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, including cinema, audio recording and replay, television and radio. We still have the first photographic images as we still have the first cinematic sequences.
War played a key role in boosting the evolution of photojournalism & documentary photography, as it did later with the strengthening of aviation during the first world war.
The American civil war and the Crimean war were clear examples of that.
Newspapers themselves gradually drew upon photography more and more as a visual staple. Wire photos and later colour printing on newsprint amplified its potency in news and journalism.
There was a golden era for photojournalism and pictorial print media with weekly large format news magazines that were extremely popular.
Then came the digital revolution and the internet. Journalism has been transformed, its business model, previously so dependent on advertising, upturned.
Inevitably photojournalism has been part of that disruption.
Recently, during the first days of the new federal parliament, there was a photographic image in the Guardian newspaper of Tasmanian Liberal MP, Bridget Archer, crossing the floor in the parliament during a significant vote on climate change legislation. Community independent, Zali Steggall, has been snapped in the act of welcoming Archer with her arm outstretched. Greens MPs sit nearby.
The photo journalist who captured that moment and many others in Australian politics, especially in parliament house itself, was Mike Bowers, now photographer-at-large for the Guardian newspaper (in Australia an online news outlet only) and earlier in his career, picture editor for the Sydney Morning Herald.
Many know Mike too as the host of the regular segment, Talking Pictures, within ABC television’s Sunday morning program, Insiders, where Mike and a guest scan the week’s offerings in that other strand of visual journalism that’s been transformed by digital, political cartoons.
Mike Bowers joined Peter Clarke in the #transitzone to discuss the art and craft of photojournalism, its ethics, history and possible future in the digital era.
RESOURCES
JACOB RIIS
https://pictolic.com/en/article/jacob-riis-photographer-immigrant-who-was-shot-an-unknown-half-of-new-york
https://allthatsinteresting.com/jacob-riis-photographs-how-the-other-half-lives
https://jacobariismuseum.dk/en/jacob-a-riis/
DAVID MOORE
https://davidmoorephotography.com.au
GEORGE BELL
https://halloffame.melbournepressclub.com/article/george-bell
HAROLD CAZENEAUX