Daniel Kempner December 10, 2006 Crisis Century I Druckrey The Impact of Photography on Journalism and Vice Versa

Any history concerning the media is equally a history of technologies. In tracing the history of the photographic image in journalism, we see that technological limitations define its early evolution more so than journalistic practice. As these limitations are surpassed, the association between photography and fact strengthens, setting the stage for the belief in the verisimilitude of the medium and its role to be played in mass communication. By the time Daguerre had announced he and Niepces discovery, and Fox Talbot did the same, there was already an emerging history of newspaper journalism in Europe and America. Accurate visual representations of topical subjects was an exciting addition to the expanding popular press, but incorporating the new technology into the mass media was slow going at first. The first setback in the adoption of images to the press, was that the more popular of the two photographic processes recently introduced was not suited to mass production. Whereas Fox Talbots calotype method had the capability of producing many identical reproductions of a photograph from an original paper negative, the daguerreotype was a one of a kind positive printed on thin metal. Although daguerreotypes had the capacity for more detail, they won favor due to the fact that Talbot had patented his method and a large sum had to be paid in order to use it. The photograph itself was not the image to appear on any mechanically printed

page. To be reproducible with ink, a daguerreotype had to be made into an engraving or woodcut by hand, thus reducing the recorded detail intrinsic in the original and relying on an artists translation of the photographic image. Although the engravers image was printed, it was understood that this image was more precise than a mere artists rendering by hand. Micahel Carlebach explains the importance of the caption in these early printed images, these copies were almost always referred to as facsimile copies of daguerreotypes in order that they be differentiated from work originally created by sketch artists, engravers, or painters (13). The resulting illustration normally required two captions, one for the photographer and one for the engraver. Even a reference to a photographic origin was thought of as more accurate than earlier artist depictions, as Edward Earle explains, it lent a sense of veracity to the engravings low definition and almost schematic-like quality (qtd. in Carlebach 13). Limitations in the early photographic processes such as lack of mobility and long exposure times restricted early imagery mostly to studio portraiture. Soon after its inception there was an understandable fascination with the photographic image and people clamored to have their portraits made and to purchase the image of recognizable figures. Photographers were very eager to photograph the rich and famous both to sell and to increase their own reputations. The commercial popularity of portraiture prompted newspapers to continue to publish pictures of public figures, making them the most common illustrations on the pages of the mass media. This would not be the case for long. Itinerant daguerreotypists began to travel outside the walls of the city studio to test the possibilities of creating images in a less controlled environment. These more adventuresome and nomadic image-makers

worked in floating galleries on streams and rivers or traveled by horse from town to town setting up crude, temporary studios for a few days and then moving on, demonstrating the mobile possibilities of daguerreotypy (Carlebach 29). As photographers continue to move away from their studios, it was seen that quality could be maintained in even the harshest situations. Carlebach describes that in 1853, a daguerreotypist named Eliphalet Brown, Jr. accompanied Commodore Matthew Perrys official voyage to the Orient (32). This newsworthy event was subsequently memorialized through the printing of over 400 lithographs from the exposures made over seas. The successes of photographers traveling abroad to document events, made it evident that a wide variety of subject matter could now find its way into the illustrated press, including spot news. On July 5, also in 1853, a great fire engulfed several river front mills in Oswego, NY. This was a major catastrophe leaving many people homeless and reducing an entire ward of the city to a mass of ashes according to the Syracuse Daily Standard (qtd. in Carlebach 42). George N. Barnard, who would be the official photographer for General Sherman on his long march during the Civil War, had been living in Oswego. The magnitude of the disaster prompted him to record the scene with daguerreotypes. Barnard made both close-up and overall views of the fire (Carlebach 42), employing a modern photojournalistic technique in creating possibly the first photographs of an unplanned news event. Although Barnard had the foresight to chronicle news in the making, his poignant images most likely werent seen for some time after they were made. The production of a detailed printing block copied from a daguerreotype normally took between one and two weeks to produce, making even organized events recent

history at their time of publication. To see an image of an event was a luxury. There was no expectation of immediate visual information in the mid nineteenth century. The status quo would begin to change as developments in printing processes were improving the speed and accuracy of photographic reproductions with ink According to Estelle Jussim, in her book, Visual Communication and the Graphic Arts, the invention of exactly repeatable printed pictures to accompany exactly repeatable printed words provided the beginnings of precise communication, so basic to science and technology (10). Hand etched printing blocks provided this opportunity for exactly repeatable printed pictures, but their precision relied on the capacity of an engraver to accurately copy a highly detailed photograph. Regardless of the skill of the draftsman, evidence of the process was present in the resulting image alluding to the act of translation. William Ivins, the Curator of Prints at the Metropolitan Museum of Art from 1916-1946, wrote extensively on this technological/perceptual barrier in the reproduction of images with ink as a problem with syntactical analysis of the thing seen. The syntax he describes is the arrangement of visible lines that appear on the printed page making up the picture itself. According to Ivins, William Henry Fox Talbot was thought to have been the first person to experiment with a photosensitive ground to protect a printing plate, whereby an image could be chemically etched into the plate (126), eliminating the engraver from the process. Talbot found that by exposing the plate to light through a negative and through a fine screen, the image was transposed as a series of ordered dots, which would hold the ink during printing. The dots would be slightly larger or smaller depending on the amount of light passing through the screen, determined by the density of the negative, thereby allowing for the appearance of a

continuous tone image produced with a uniform amount of ink on the plate. By removing any indication of hand production, printed images retained more detail and resembled more closely their photographic originals. Ivins explains, In the improved half-tone process there was no preliminary syntactical analysis of the thing seen into lines and dots, and the ruled lines and dots of the process had fallen below the threshold of normal vision (128). Newspapers slowly started to adopt the new technology, and as it spread, so too did the gradual replacement of draftsmen with photographers in the newsroom. Photographers understood that innovations in the world of printing afforded them a greater responsibility in the function of mass media and began to modify their methods. Talbot found reason for people to think twice about using daguerreotypes since the halftone process required a reproducible original. Attention was drawn back to glass and paper plates and work began to improve the speed and quality of the emulsion coating and portability and functionality of the camera. Ulrich Keller, professor of History and Art at UCSB, notes the fundamental connection between the technologies of photography and the technologies of printing in the development of an effective use of imagery in print media, Even with the halftone innovation the newspapers would have continued to make very broad use of hand art, had it not been for the new emulsions, which ensured that instead of a few selected subjects, photography could now be used to practically cover the whole range of newsworthy subjects (Keller 173). Discovery of the wet and dry-plate processes as well as the shutter and handheld camera democratized the medium, consequently beginning the interminable deluge of imagery. Once the technology of representation and the technology of dissemination were

capable of proliferating any given image to large numbers of people in a timely manner, modern photojournalism began to emerge. In its capacity to churn out mechanically reproduced images with near photographic detail, the half-tone not only revolutionized the illustrated press but also the publics perception of the photograph as fact. Communications professors Kevin G. Barnhurst and John C. Nerone describe early 20th century attitudes towards reproductions in the newspaper, photographs gained respect as seemingly objective documents, and editors would no longer permit retouching or decorating an image (62). A shift from circulating accessible pictures to the treatment of pictures as sought after content for prominent display emerged, also leading to changes in reportorial style. The descriptiveness afforded by more sensitive plates and smaller cameras began to free up reporters from describing the setting, to elucidation. Barnhurst and Nerone also note the importance of the invisibility of the printing process in modern photojournalism, as reporters effaced themselves in objective news accounts, pictures also acquired an aura of objectivity, as if they were unauthored (62). Of course not only are published photograph not unauthored, they are credited. Bylines simultaneously assert authorship and guarantee that authorship does not matter, they explain, when a shooter puts his or her name to a news photo, the act does not mean this is my vision. Rather, it means I was there when it happened (91). A seemingly unauthored picture signed by a witness is a very convincing piece of information. The photographs new status as definitive eyewitness account ushered in an era of demand for imagery in the press. Supply increased through a rise in photo agencies who gathered and circulated photographs of spot news and long term photographic stories and illustrated magazines such as Life and Look in the 1930s where more emphasis was placed on the imagery than

on the accompanying text began to appear in the U.S. and overseas. Pictures were everywhere. With photographys new status on the printed page came the burden of journalistic responsibility adhered to by the photographer, editor, and publisher. Ulrich Keller recognizes a secondary effect of imperceptible syntax, The power of the halftone technology then arises precisely from the fact that it bestows the quality of authentic reality on constructed, in many cases biased and contrived scenes (173). What in one sense is the goal of mechanically reproducible photographic imagery in combination with mechanically reproducible text, the precise communication of facts, can also be seen to possess an equally subversive role applied to influence or deceive. The difficulty to refute a photograph came to be seen as a means of portraying certain attitudes, both favorable and not in the realm of government and politics. Bonnie Brennen and Hanno Hardt, journalism professors and editors of several books concerning the print media, provide context for some of the iconic nationalistic images of our time, consequently, the discovery of the photographic image as a powerful tool for political propaganda in both the Soviet union and the United States inspired great photographers and produced memorable images for the cause of socialism and democracy (18). Creating a series of pictures that promote national identity or attempt to create social change can be accomplished by directing the camera at certain pertinent subject matter. The images retain their visual accuracy to a moment in time, although, from a highly subjective point of view. Besides bestowing authenticity to constructed and contrived scenes as Keller points out, indiscernible syntax in the printing method, also confer validity to pictures

that have been physically altered. Flagrant abuse of biased imagery and its captions, and blatant manipulation of photographs for political effect coincide directly with contemporary beliefs of the voracity of the photographic image. The French journalist and filmmaker, Alain Jaubert, has compiled an entire volume, Making People Disappear, of instances of politically motivated doctoring and manipulation of photographs throughout the twentieth century. Jauberts editor, Roy Godson, unifies the examples depicted in the preface, The falsification of photographs comes easily to those governments and elites that seek to be the sole interpreters of history and have a monopoly on the information media. It seems ironic that technological advancements that attempted to clarify and communicate more faithfully through images, in effect, increased the mediums capacity to fabricate. Whats most ironic, though, is that there is no irony. Doctoring photographs as a means of deception for political gain is not the unfortunate outcome of an attempt to achieve accuracy and objectivity; it is a more severe version of the same thing. As Andy Grundberg puts it so succinctly in an article written in 1990 about digital photography, the meaning of photographs is determined not so much by the camera as by the human being behind the machine and by the contexts in which the resulting images are seen. What is in fact ironic, is that what has always been true required a hyperbolic reduction in syntax to be noticed. Now that technology has enabled effortless undetectable photographic manipulation and infinite reproduction of pictures both in print and electronically, what is value of the photograph in the media? The rise of digital imaging and electronic media has reduced the perceived authenticity of a photograph back to that of a hand engraved woodblock. It took the invention of Adobe Photoshop

and the development of the internet for Andy Grundberg and many others to realize, Ultimately, the pictures meaning, and the meaning of all photographs, depends on what viewers choose to believe about it.