Tuesday 25 September 2012

Photojournalism

In 1933 Henri Cartier-Bresson took a photo called Behind The Car Saint Lazareusing which shows his skill at capturing the 'Decisive Moment', the picture was of a man jumping over a puddle and his picture has made history. Bresson used a Leica camera which was released in 1925, the camera was good because it had a fast shutter speed, allowing you to capture the fastest moment, Also you could see the world with one eye, while looking through the apperature with the other meaning that you could frame the photo perfectly. Bresson didnt use props for his images, where as most modern photographers do, this made Bressons name go down in hisotry for capturing the purest form of the decisive moment.

The term 'photojournalism' was born during war. I looked into the cases of two famous photographers. Tony Vaccaro, a brave soldier equipped only with a standard military camera, who captured deccicive moments and developed the films by himself, he did this by putting developer fluids into a helmet and developing photos in them. The other case i looked into was that of robert cappa who was a photojournalist for Life magazine. Although he was sent over seas to photograph the war he never got as close to the action as Tony Vaccaro.

Eddie Adams is another example of a war photographer, He famously captured the moment a bullet hit a  loyalist soldiers head during an execution. His photo however is very controversial, due to the picture expressing 'false truth' by this i mean that, if you watch the video of the execution  you can see what really happened, where as the picture gives you the belief he was stood there for a while before being executed, it didnt happen like that, there was no formality or humanity to the event, also the photo expresses more emotion as and depth to the scene. When you watch back the footage that was filmed of the event, you can see how little time the prisoner was given, How quick the event unfolded. The man had seconds before being shot, the executer was so casual and didnt show a sign of emotion. This is an excellent sign of how untrusting photographs can be. Photographs pounce on a fraction of a second and leave the build up to the opinion of the viewer.


 
                 The photo of the execution of a loyalist soldier was taken in 1936 by Eddie Adams.