Below are my notes from today’s session on the different types of Photojournalism, I have tried to find and think of my own examples:

 

There are two main categories of photojournalism – photo stories and editorial photojournalism.

 

EDITORIAL PHOTOJOURNALISM

Images are crafted to illustrate – the text is the main backbone of the story and the pictures flesh it out. In other words, even without the photos, the story would make sense on it’s own.

Types of editorial photojournalism:

• Pure Illustration

These are usually set up in a studio or elsewhere for a specific purpose – to illustrate a particular angle of a story. For example, the main image in this article in GQ.

• Portraiture

An example that immediately came to my mind was an interview I had read in The Sunday Times Magazine with Hillary Clinton. Portraiture photography is usually used for a similar purpose: one-on-one interviews and profile pieces.

Other examples of editorial photojournalism include:

• Fashion
• Product (eg. cars)
• Food

 

Although it is artistically impressive, researching editorial photography has confirmed that I am not as interested in shooting editorial pieces for my project.

 

PHOTO STORY

The images tell the story. There may be little or no text at all, and if there is text then it is used to support the images that are the main feature of the story. In other words, even without any text at all, the story would make sense from the photos alone.

Types of photo stories:

DOCUMENTARY

• Social

Examples include the work of Daniel Meadows who lived with the Stockport Gypsie community for several weeks, and Martin Parr’s photography of working class people in Brighton, titled The Last Resort.

• Industrial

Examples include Jonathan Browning who spends a lot of time in Shanghai freelancing industrial photography: airplanes to textiles, and local Leeds photographer, Simon Vine who specialises in commercial photography.

• Street/candid

Has similarities to social documentary photography – I feel as though one of the main differences is that in street/candid photography, the subject is less likely to know the photo is being taken. Examples include Mimi Mollica’s Nora There, Matt Stuart, all of Peter Dench’s work – particularly England Uncensored and all of Maciej Dakowicz‘s series’. Another example of candid photography that I especially admire is Pete Souza’s book about his years in the White House with Barack Obama – it’s one of the reason I chose this module in particular.

UPDATE: To read my further research on street/candid photography, click here.

• Documentary Portraiture

Examples include the Afghan Girl by Steve McCurry, Humans of New York and Atlas of Beauty which are some of my favourite projects and why I’ve been particularly inspired by documentary portraiture when researching it.

UPDATE: To read my further research on documentary portraiture, click here.

 

REPORTAGE

Reportage uses the most traditional journalistic skills compared to other types of photojournalism. Reportage photography tells the story of an event – usually as it is happening.

• War

Examples include many of the pictures on @wh_photograph_ and the work of Peter Arnett who has been dubbed one of the best photographers of war in history.

• Politics

Examples include Ed Miliband’s bacon sandwich photo, and the works of Pete Marovich.

• News

Examples include extreme weather conditions, such as floods and fires, or even headlines news that is captured in-the-moment. One of the most famous examples that I immediately thought of was the many harrowing images from the London bombings in 2005.

• Celebrity

This may be in public or at events with a press pass. Examples include some of the most famous in this gallery. Paparazzi shots are also an example of celebrity photojournalism.

• Sports

Examples include Bob Martin, Mark Pain and Adrian Dennis‘ portfolios.

• Live Music

Live music photographers can get press passes to access the area between the crowd and the performers – this is how many of them get the best photos. Examples include Todd Owyoung‘s impressive portfolio.

 

I found today very interesting as I am – and have always been – passionate and inspired by the work of photojournalists. It also opened my eyes to different types of photojournalism that have surprisingly interested me considering I have always been a fan of the likes of street photojournalism and documentary portraiture.

 

Although I haven’t got a concrete idea on what I’d like to do my photojournalism project on, going through the different fields of photojournalism today has shown me that I probably don’t want to do a type of editorial photojournalism as my favourite projects and portfolios to research were those centred around people and their stories.

For this reason, I am going to look into social and documentary portraiture as well as street/candid photography over the next couple of weeks to see if I can get some inspiration for my own project. I will show my research in upcoming posts.

 

UPDATE:

To read my research on street and candid photography, click here.

To read my research on documentary portraiture, click here.