The Golden Age Of Photojournalism

Capturing an image that shows a story without any words gives a photo a sense of power and beauty. A daily picture that is taken by an ordinary person is a memory for that individual, but photojournalist captures a picture for the public.By taking local pictures of the lives of citizens engages in their everyday actions. They take photos of the moment without staging the picture or getting the right pose. Their pictures tells stories of beauty; stories of loss and violence; stories of joy and heartache; and stories that call people to unite or fight for what is right or wrong. The audience who views these photos do not have to be literate or wealthy to view them and understand them. Photojournalist is not the same as personal photography.

In 1925 photojournalism began to skyrocket even more because the Leica camera was invented as well as the commercial flashbulb in 1927. Shortly after the cameras became more popular, photojournalism became a big success, they even called the 1900’s the “golden age” for photojournalism. The golden age was between the 1930s to the 1960s because the 35mm cameras were invented. The 3mm camera were the first cameras you can travel with because of its small size and lightweight. This new technology made photojournalism more powerful by capturing newsworthy events around the

The documents contained little news, but it captured the lives of people in poverty. “Various magazines such as Life (probably the most famous of its time), Sports Illustrated, Paris Match, and Picture Post began publishing photos of events,” Those magazines began to publish Photos that will not even be seen by the public at that time. The most popular photojournalist of the “Golden age” that captured moments in poverty are Walker Evans, Dorothea Lange and Gordon Parks. Walker photos for fifty years were mostly about the lives of ordinary people. His photos shows people doing regular motions: people chatting, walking,or even sitting down. He will even capture images of poor people and what their daily lives are like. Dorothea Lange’s captured one of the most popular photo during the Great Depression called “Migrant Mother.” This iconic photo features a homeless mother and her children. No one knows what the name of the mother is or the children, but the only information we do know is that the family was living off of frozen vegetables and birds the children had captured themselves. Langes began her career as a photofinisher then shortly after opened up her own studio. A few of the most famous pictures taken at that time was during the Civil rights movements in the 1960s. Most of the well known pictures were taken by Gordon Parks: the first African American Photojournalist