Visual Journalism

1974: Words on Pictures

[This article originally appeared in the Autumn 1974 issue of Nieman Reports.]The media—and in particular newspapers—are taken to task by Edwin Newman in the October [1974] issue of The Atlantic…

1952: Does Press Freedom Include Photography?

Consider the record of smashed cameras and the arbitrary barring of news photographers.

The Story Roy DeCarava’s Photographs Tell About a Different Black America

[This article originally appeared in the Summer 1998 issue of Nieman Reports.]Roy DeCarava doesn’t occupy a space, he blends with it. But to say that his approach to photography is…

Michele McDonald

Alabanians show reports of beatings by Serbs in Kosovo.These photos were taken in August, 1993 in Serbia, Bosnia and Kosovo for The Boston Globe. Reporter Sally Jacobs and I were…

David Turnley

© David Turnley/Black Star, “In Times of War & Peace,” 1996RELATED ARTICLE“The Best Picture I Never Took”– David TurnleyIn his introduction to “In Times Of War And Peace,” a book…

Inner Eye

A Life-Long Strategy for Learning Photojournalism

Pictures Dominate, Words Come Second

In editing our documentaries, the picture leads. Writing the narration is literally the last thing I do. That doesn’t mean I don’t have concrete ideas about the story, especially since…

People Without People

What is “People Without People?” For me it is the sense of people without them being there. It’s the part representing the whole. It’s the significant detail giving instant insight…

Interaction

Mary Beth Meehan/The Providence Journal-Bulletin.As a documentary photographer, I am most interested in using the medium to describe the relationships that people have—with their environment, with each other. I’m fascinated…

Honest Emotion

Photo by Torsten Kjellstrand/The Herald.Emotion is the language of documentary photography. Without it, a picture has little value, except possibly as evidence in court. Most of us look for a…