Archived posting to the Leica Users Group, 1999/09/11
[Author Prev] [Author Next] [Thread Prev] [Thread Next] [Author Index] [Topic Index] [Home] [Search]At 10:05 PM 9/10/99 -0700, Mark Rabiner wrote: >I the back of my mind I'm remembering reading that the issue was not >cameras but >the invention of the halftone process. Yes, the halftone process, which came into being about 1892, and the general use of photos in newspapers, which got into full swing in 1912 or so, played a significant role in putting pictures in newspapers. But it wasn't photojournalism as it's practiced today. They created Composmographs. Sort of like what can be done with Photoshop now, but very crude. They would take pictures of people and assemble them, like someone peeping through a keyhole at a politician having an affair (hey, they don't even do that with Photoshop today) and run it on the front page. Sort of taking an eyewitness report and assembling a picture to show what it would look like. That is not journalism. Sure, they had pictures that are pretty much equivalent of what they do today. Newspapers were overrun with portraits, as they are today. Small newspapers today are full of grip-and-grins. That's not photojournalism. Well, portraits are, but they are overused because they save time. You don't have to wait around for something to happen for real. It's a weakness of newspapers today that that is the case. The technology of photography, and specifically photojournalism, improved as time went on. But it wasn't until the Leica came along that photojournalism was liberated from the limitations of photographic technology. That's when it became a profession that changed the publishing world. That gave rise to the picture magazines. That created the photo essay. That allowed people like Gene Smith, Elliott Erwitt, Ernst Haas to do their thing. It's what 35mm cameras did for the profession. No other technology had the impact on photojournalism that 35mm cameras did. Leica is at the head of this great movement. Dumb luck, or genius. Your decide. Eric Welch St. Joseph, MO http://www.ponyexpress.net/~ewelch Learn from your parents' mistakes - use birth control!