Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/10
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At 10:35 AM 9/10/99 -0400, prs wrote:
>Photojournalism was around long before Leica. It was 'created' when the
>first photograph appeared in a publication.
I would hardly call it photojournalism. Journalism isn't just writing
descriptions of what people look like. Photojournalism is more than showing
what something looks like. It's telling stories with a picture, or
pictures. The word didn't even exist until after the Leica was introduced.
But I will concede you are technically correct. On the other hand, I used
the word photojournalism in the sense of what it is now, not what the
broadest definition of the word might be stretched to.
And besides, the first photograph to appear in a publication wasn't a long
time before, it was something like 1892 or something like that. Would you
call a wood cut based on a daguerreotype photojournalism because it was
printed? No.
And Dr. Erich Solomon was doing it before the Leica with an Ermanox. But
the Leica really set the medium free to be what it could be. The technology
of photojournalism has always been about freeing photographers to do what
they do best, with the least amount of fuss and bother. Leica is not so
dominant now, but it would never have been close to as great a profession
so early if Leica hadn't come along. This world's collective memory would
be quite different.
Eric Welch
St. Joseph, MO
http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch
.one sees the glass half full, another, the glass half
empty. The engineer sees the glass twice as big as it has to be.