Photojournalism has evolved in two key ways over the last 200 years: 1) Society and culture have changed, giving audiences more context and knowledge to interpret photos on deeper levels beyond just factual images. Photos can now convey symbolic meanings and perspectives. 2) Technological advances have transformed cameras from bulky equipment requiring long exposures to high-quality digital cameras allowing spontaneous, detailed photos anywhere. This empowered photojournalists to capture important moments that define history.

1. Hannah McNeill
How has Photojournalism evolved in the last 200 years?
To judge and characterize how photojournalism has evolved we have to acknowledge
all the different features and aspects of photojournalism from past and present, taking
every element into consideration. Photojournalism used to be an expensive luxury,
the ability to just capture simple photographs was rare and highly regarded. However,
in modern day anyone has access to a camera and therefore the skill of
photojournalism goes under appreciated and is taken for granted.
Firstly, in order to answer this question, we have to establish what photojournalism is.
Photojournalism is a photograph that potentially requires the ability to tell a story, it
is a form of journalism used worldwide. Photojournalism holds an important place in
society because it brings together different communities and cultures, by introducing
a type of journalism without words, eliminating the language barrier between
countries. It is also a vital part of our society because it captures life-changing events,
it can more effectively stimulate empathy and understanding through taking thought
evoking, provocative photographs, acquiring the power to change the worlds
perspectives.
In my opinion Photojournalism has evolved due to two different external factors.
Firstly, through time the photos started to include different elements that demanded
the audience to take a more developed interpretation to understand the photo on a
deeper level. Allowing the audience to, instead of being stuck on the first most
obvious interpretation of the photo, to take advantage of all the deeper layers hidden
in the photo. “Great Photography is about depth of feeling, not depth of field.” –
Peter Adams, British Filmmaker and Author. The focus of some pieces of
Photojournalism started to shift towards interpretation and perspective specific to
each induvial, and how they receive a photo, taking into consideration the cultural,
historical and social connotations that a photo can carry. According to sociologist
Stuart Hall the way the audience receives a piece of media is dependent on the
audience’s ability to decode encoded messages and values incorporated into the piece
of media by the producer. “Yesterday's deconstructions are often tomorrow's
orthodox clichés.” – Stuart Hall. The number of messages the audience is able to
receive is dependent on the audience’s background and cultural knowledge. Encoded
messages can be received in three different forms, either a; dominant/preferred
reading, where they agree,understand and enjoy the text, an oppositional reading
where they reject the preferred reading and disagree with the concept and the text, or
they follow a negotiated reading, a compromise between dominant and oppositional
where there are dependent factors that they both agree and argue with.
The way an audience receives a photo is completely dependent on the audience’s
ability to decode the photo depending on their background knowledge. For
Photojournalism, it is important for the photo to contain symbolic meanings because
there is no text that supports the photo. (Symbolic meanings is part of the semiotics
theory from Charles Sanders Peirce,theoretically known as a symbol semiotic is
when there is no visual link between the photo and the meaning of the photo, so to
understand the photo you would have to know previous cultural knowledge and
understand parts of the photo through symbols or subtle links.) This applies well to
photojournalism because there is a lot of photos where the audience will have to
understand the previous cultural knowledge in order to understand the photo. So,
different audiences have very different readings of the same photo depending on their
cultural knowledge.
This is relevant to how photojournalism has evolved because when photojournalism
first began it was with the series of Crimean War photos, which were primarily
factual and taken to report back to people at home what the War was like. The photos
of the battlegrounds and camps were not glorified and didn’t leave any space for
interpretation, they were not taken for an audience to have a preferred reading the
photos were meant to evoke emotion as people at home realised the intensity and

2. Hannah McNeill
hardship of the war. However,in present time photojournalism is used for deeper,
more thought-provoking situations. For example, a more tabloid example of
photojournalism adapting to modern life and having a double meaning is when a
photograph from 1996 was released of President Bill Clinton innocently hugging
Monica Lewinsky at a fund-raiser in Washington. To first glance the photo is
straightforward and simple so disappeared into obscurity. However,news of their
affair broke and now the photo carries mystery, secrets and adulterousness
connotations. Now, if an audience looks at the photo knowing the contextual
knowledge the photo can be interpreted in a completely different way, there are
multiple different oppositional responses to exactly the same photo. We can thank
modern day media for spreading the news of Monica Lewinsky and Bill Clinton and
giving us the information to be able to interpret the photo understanding the symbolic
meanings hidden in the photo, for example, before what would have been interpreted
as a humble smile from Monika Lewinsky can now be seen as a smug and conceited
smile as well as other elements of the photo that can now be questioned.
Secondly, an integral part of the evolution of photojournalism is the advancement in
technology. Photojournalism was first born in the 1850s, nearly 200 years ago, with
the first camera created is unrecognisable from modern cameras. During the 1850’s
the cameras were essentially to capture photos of the war, by famous War time
photographer Roger Fenton. It used to be a lot more complicated to take a photo and
included a range of different steps in order to take a single photo - that’s why having
a series from Fenton was so impressive at the time. The cameras used were bulky and
the photos required long exposures on plates that had to be developed immediately in
huge, mobile darkrooms. The photo had to be in landscape due to the heavy and
awkward positioning of the camera and for a decent quality photograph, with the
scene requiring natural lighting for the exposure to be right. Moving images were
virtually impossible to capture and would just be blurry, after taking a photo,
photographers would have to wait up to 20 minutes because of the long exposure
time, spontaneous photos were out of the question. The development from the last
150 years in cameras has given the world of Photojournalism the ability to grow into
something unbelievable. Then instant cameras were introduced in 1948, e.g.
Polaroid’s. Instant cameras immediately became very popular because they let you
print and view photos within minutes of taking them, which at the time was
revolutionary. The first digital camera was then created by Sony in 1981, but in the
world of photojournalism the first proper digital camera system was created by
Polaroid, a Nikon F3 that worked at 1.3 megapixels. However now, in 2020 a high-
end DSLRs camera,such as the Canon EOS 1D-C offer image quality and recording
at 4K resolution in a compact body.
The comparison of cameras from the 1850s - 2010s seems unbelievable, but the
comparison is a clear and descriptive way of explaining how it has benefitted and
changed Photojournalism around the world. Photojournalists are able to capture
photos with small intense details using excellent high definition camera quality. In
my opinion the most important difference that better quality cameras have introduced
to Photojournalism is the ability to capture spontaneous photos. The accessibility and
convenience of being able to capture a photo at any moment is so important and vital
to Photojournalism in modern day because there are so many once in a lifetime events
that happen in the moment and people rely on Photojournalism to capture them so
everyone can experience it second hand through the lens of the camera. So,the
development of cameras and the ability of being able to take photos anywhere has
been a game changer for photojournalism and completely changed the way we take
photos. However, for different photographer’s cameras stand for different things,
some photographers rely on the cameras to make the photo and trust the camera
quality to bring the photo to life, whereas other photographers rely on their ability
and talent to capture a photo and trust themselves regardless of what camera they’re
using. Sir Donald McCullin, CBE, Hon FRPS (born 9 October 1935), is a British

3. Hannah McNeill
photojournalist, particularly recognized for his war photography and images of urban
strife said “I only use a camera like I use a toothbrush. It does the job.” Pointing out
that the photographer should have enough talent and belief in himself to take the
photo no matter what camera he is using.
To conclude I think Photojournalism has evolved in two crucial ways, the way
society has changed and developed over time, due to different world events and
changes in social structure. Therefore,changing the way people interpret photos,
giving them the opportunity to take a minute and absorb a photo’s connotations
before just looking at the obvious aspects of the photo. The second way
photojournalism has evolved is the evolution of cameras and how the quality of a
camera has changed the world of photojournalism over the years. In correlation, these
two factors can be compared and they do complement each other because the ability
to decode and interpret photos is solely dependent on being able to see every detail
and aspect of a photo which relies on a good camera exposure to highlight every
feature of the photo. I think it would be up for debate whether photojournalism would
have developed at all without either of these aspects.