CURATED LIBRARIES

Photojournalism Library

Like cinema, photojournalism is an art form that belongs to the acceleration of image and communications technologies developed across the past hundred-odd years. It has supplied the driving force behind the extreme proliferation and ubiquity of image and image literacy of our era, delivering news with a concision and impact unrivaled by the printed word. Through figures such as Robert Capa, the figure of the photojournalist acquired heroic mystique in the 1930s–1950s, as an adrenaline junkie willing to endanger his or her life to snatch revelatory images from the heart of the action. The photojournalists of this period--Capa, W. Eugene Smith and Margaret Bourke-White among them--were generally employed by magazines such as Picture Post, Paris Match, Life and others. Since the late 1970s, photojournalist photography has made inroads into the realm of art photography, and is often exhibited in galleries. In dispensing with film rolls and allowing both greater freedom of movement and almost instant transmission, the digital camera has further revolutionized the character of photojournalism.

Featured image, of a soldier's ammunition belt is from Tim Heatherington's Infidel.

In 2007, Vanity Fair sent Perfect Storm author Sebastian Junger and photojournalist Tim Hetherington to Afghanistan to document a platoon of US soldiers stationed in a remote outpost named "Restrepo." Their documentary film of the same name won the Grand Jury Prize at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival, and Hetherington's Infidel is featured in this Photojournalism Libray.