Doisneau was born in 1912 in Gentilly, near Paris. He became a self-taught photographer and started working for Renault as an advertiser. He lost interest in his job there and became a freelance photographer moving on to the streets in 1939. However his dreams were put to a stop by the beginning of the war. He served in the French army until 1940 from then on he worked for the resistance. In 1949 he started to do fashion photography for Vogue however would not have his name put on the work. Doisneau was passionate about the people on the streets and that is where he became famous. He used humour and empathy to portray most of his images of the life in Paris.
His most famous piece of work is the ‘Kiss in front of the Palace of city hall’. Doisneau’s described himself as a ‘percheur d’images’, a fisher of images, where he would sit a wait for the perfect moment to photograph. This was believed until near the end of his life when a series of international law suits lead to the reveal that his most famous photograph was in fact set up using two actors.
Robert Doisneau
Damon Winter
Damon Winter is a New York based photography working for The New York Times but specializing in documentary, editorial and portrait. Winter tends to use a Canon 5D with a 35mm f1.4 lens, which is incredible in low light, or 24-70 lens however for his collect ‘Grunts’ he simply used his iPhone on the Hipstamatic app. His collection won third place for ‘feature picture story’ from Pictures of the Year International.
Winter is the first person to win an award for using a photo app and this has caused a lot of debate whether his work should count as photojournalism. Chip Litherland has said that “The fact it was shot on a phone isn't relevant at all and fair game, but what is relevant is the fact it was processed through an app that changes what was there when he shot them. It's now no longer photojournalism, but photography.” My argument against this is similar to Winter’s himself. Winter said in an interview that “In processing, every image receives what seems to be a pretty similar treatment; a colour balance shift, the burning of predetermined areas of the frame and increased contrast. There are all fairly standard parameters in Photoshop. And they can be done on a colour enlarger. The problem people have with an app, I believe, is that a computer program is imposing the parameter, not the photographer.” If people are unhappy with the app changing the realism of the photo then shouldn’t staged images also not be classed as photojournalism as technically they are not of real events. And most if not all photojournalist photos have been edited within Photoshop after the event.
The photos that Winter has taken in his Grunts collection open the door to a side of war that is not normally seen. It shows them as scared brothers trying to help each other get through a difficult time. I believe that these photos deserved to win as they are unobtrusive to the men and show us something beautiful in a terrible place. They are great pieces of photojournalism done in a way that has yet to be tried but could work if used correctly, such us here.
© Damon Winter - 3rd place 'Feature Picture Story' POYI
William Klein
William Klein was born in New York in 1928. After moving to Paris at the age of 20 he enrolled at the ‘Sorbonne’. Here he was encouraged to ‘revolt and to reject conformity’ and to go back to the streets. This is where he became a painter with a style of abstract and architectural. When he started to get into photography he brought along his paintings style and he set out re-invent photojournalism.
Klein photos were often blurred or out of focus, with high contrast prints as he over exposed his work, high grain film and wide angles. This shocked the photography world and opened new doors for photojournalism. However he did earn a reputation as an anti-photographer photographer. After a while of doing this he was inspired by Moholy-Nagy and Kepes, Klein started to juxtapose his abstract paintings with his photographs. This grabbed Vogues attention and he was invited back to New York for a job.
During his time back in New York he created his book ‘New York; Life is Good and Good for You in New York’. Vogue was not happy with the collect as they thought it portrayed New York as crude and vulgar. He could not find a publisher for his work until he went back to Paris. After this mishap Klein started to do fashion photography however he would take his models on the streets with him. He was not interested in the fashion however wanted to experiment by bringing new techniques to the fashion photography, such as wide angle, long focus, long exposures combined with flash and multiple exposures.
Klein wasn’t much interested in the camera or on how to make a photograph look perfect. He cared about what he was photographing and done it for what interested him. In an interview he said “The right filter, the right film, the right exposure – none of that interested me very much. I had only one camera to start with. Second hand two lenses no filter, none of that. What interested me was getting something on film to put into an enlarger, maybe to get another picture.”
© William Klein
My Own Photojournalism
For information on photgraphs click to view full screen and descriptions.
Research on Photojournalist
Brandon Stanton
Stanton started taking photos in 2010 and has taken over 5,000 portraits. He is a self-taught photography who gets “really passionate about things”. His book ‘Humans of New York” has won awards from Webby for ‘Best use of photography’ and the Peoples Voice Award for ‘Best Cultural Blog’. Stanton’s work seems to bring people together that have never met. His idea of using words/stories with his work is something that, for me, makes it very special.
The way that Stanton presents his work is also very different. Instead of the usual books or advertisements or even galleries, Stanton puts all of his work on his blog, Facebook and Twitter. His ‘Humans of New York’ was published into a book but this is the only traditional way Stanton shows his work. He will take photos during the day and then upload them to his sites within 2-3 days. Keeping it forever updated and new.
See his work here http://www.humansofnewyork.com/tagged/featured.
Brandon Stanton work is a mixture being portrait and photojournalism. I wanted to research into his work, as it is something different to what is already out there. Stanton travels around New York taking portraits of its people as well as asking them about their lives. He talks to his subjects and uses the information he finds out to create captions or ‘stories’. This makes for images that can cause such emotion for the viewer that they would not have been able to get just from an image. For me his work has a form of ‘don’t judge a book by its cover’ as the people he takes photos of and talks to have such amazing things to say that may or may not fit to their image.
“Is that you?”
“Kind of”
“What was the happiest moment of your life?” “Probably when I was dreaming” “What were you dreaming?” “About ice cream”
“When my husband was dying, I said ‘Moe, how am I supposed to live without you?’ he told me ‘Take the love you have for me and spread it around.’”
These photos are ©Damon Stanton. I do not own these images.
History
Photojournalism came about as a form of photography in the late 1920’s and early 1930’s. It was introduced due to the new technology of small, hand held cameras such as the Leica. This meant that photographers were able to record fast moving subjects or catch them unaware. This new technology mixed together with the rise of magazine such as Picture Post and Life meant that there was a strong need for new photojournalist to arise. The main types of photojournalism then were Celebrities, Politics, Citizens, Modernity and Photo stories.
Celebrities used photojournalism to shape their image, people including Virginia Woolf and Albert Einstein. It could show these celebrities as normal people. This then lead to the creation of paparazzi and even Reality TV.
Political photographer Erich Salomon published a booked called ‘Famous Contemporaries in Unguarded Moments’ in 1931 where he sneaked his camera into receptions and court cases to reveal uncomfortable truths and to raise awareness. Politian’s started to use the street as a form of self-promotion with the help of the photographers.
Citizen photography started in 1936 due to the post war photos for a new kind of humane photography. Magnum Photography and its collection of work pioneered this movement. It traced the impact of war as well as the aftermath and concentrated on vulnerable individuals.
Modernity’s used the new technology that allowed them to send photos electronically from remote locations back to agencies and magazines. The idea behind this form was to make the people seem like the world around them. For example crowds making it seem chaotic.
Photo-Stories came into played when rolled photographic film became available, meaning that photographers were able to take a sequence of images. Magazine editors became adept to putting photo stories on a double page lay out. By the 1950’s Photo-Stories had become a mode by its own right.