Photojournalism Photography

Photojournalism is an important thread within the history of photography. It can be understood as the professional practice of reporting current events through photography in collaboration with news media. This movement page brings together photographers, eras, and related contexts so readers can see how the approach developed, where it circulated, and which artists help define its historical position.

Basic facts
MovementPhotojournalism
Photographers6

Overview

The professional practice of reporting current events through photography in collaboration with news media. The success of LIFE magazine from 1936 and the founding of Magnum Photos in 1947 helped secure photographers’ authorship and independence.

Photographers

🇩🇪DE1897–1985
Germaine Krull
Modernism
ModernismPhotojournalism

Germaine Krull was one of the most dynamic photographers of interwar modernism, working across portraiture, journalism, experimental views of machinery, and urban street life.

Read details
🇫🇷FR1908–2004
Henri Cartier-Bresson
Decisive Moment
Decisive MomentPhotojournalism+1

Henri Cartier-Bresson encountered Surrealism from 1926 onward and, through Rene Crevel, came into contact with Andre Breton.

Read details
🇭🇺HU1913–1954
Robert Capa
War Photography
War PhotographyPhotojournalism

Robert Capa was a persona invented in Paris in 1933 by the Hungarian-born Andre Friedmann and Gerda Taro, partly so his pictures could command higher prices on the freelance market.

Read details
🇺🇸US1918–1978
W. Eugene Smith
War Photography
War PhotographySocial Documentary+1
🇺🇸US1926–2022
William Klein
Street Photography
Street PhotographyAmerican Photography+1

William Klein brought a painter's aggression to photography, using grain, blur, wide-angle distortion, and invasive closeness as a language of urban energy rather than as technical flaws.

Read details
🇿🇦ZA1940–1990
Ernest Cole
Photojournalism
PhotojournalismSocial Documentary+1

Ernest Cole (1940-1990) was a South African photographer who exposed apartheid from within the system that shaped his own daily life.

Read details