Getting the Picture : The Visual Culture of the News

"Powerful and often controversial, news pictures promise to make the world at once immediate and knowable. Yet while many great writers and thinkers have evaluated photographs of atrocity and crisis, few have sought to set these images in a broader context by defining the rich and diverse history of news pictures in their many forms. For the first time, this volume defines what counts as a news picture, how pictures are selected and distributed, where they are seen and how we critique and value them. Presenting the best new thinking on this fascinating topic, this book considers the news picture over time, from the dawn of the illustrated press in the nineteenth century, through photojournalism's heyday and the rise of broadcast news and newsreels in the twentieth century and into today's digital platforms. It examines the many kinds of images: sport, fashion, society, celebrity, war, catastrophe and exoticism; and many mediums, including photography, painting, wood engraving, film and video. Packed with the best research and full colour-illustrations throughout, this book will appeal to students and readers interested in how news and history are key sources of our rich visual culture"-- Provided by publisher Cover page 1 Halftitle page 2 Image 3 Title page 4 Copyright page 5 CONTENTS 6 ILLUSTRATIONS 11 ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 14 CONTRIBUTORS 15 General Introduction 22 Defining the subject 23 Defining the object 25 Picturing and modernity 26 Notes 30 PART ONE BIG PICTURES 32 Introduction 34 Notes 36 1.1 Dupinade, French Caricature, 1831 37 Notes 39 1.2 General Wool and His Troops in the Streets of Saltillo, 1847 40 Note 42 1.3 An Abolitionist Daguerreotype, New York, 1850 43 Notes 45 1.4 Antietam Sketches and Photographs, 1862 47 Notes 52 1.5 Barricades of Paris Commune, 1871 53 Notes 55 1.6 Interview of Chevreul, France, 1886 * 56 Notes 58 1.7 Zapata and Salinas, Mexico, 1911 and 1991 59 1.8 Photographer on the Western Front, 1917 62 Notes 64 1.9 Sports Photomontage, France, 1926 65 Notes 67 1.10 Public Execution, Sing Sing Prison, 1928 69 Notes 72 1.11 Photo of Kellogg–Briand Pact Meeting, Paris, 1931 73 Notes 75 1.12 A Decisive Moment, France, 1932 76 Notes 78 1.13 Republican Soldier, Spanish Civil War, 1936 80 Notes 82 1.14 Soviet War Photo, Crimea, 1942 83 Notes 86 1.15 Child in Warsaw Ghetto, 1943 87 Notes 89 1.16 Flag-Raising, Iwo Jima, 1945 90 Notes 93 1.17 New York in Color, 1953 94 Notes 96 1.18 Rosa Parks Fingerprinted, Montgomery, Alabama, 1956 97 Notes 99 1.19 An Essay on Successin the USA, 1962 100 Note 102 1.20 Burning Monk, Saigon, 1963 103 Notes 105 1.21 Kennedy Assassination, Dallas, 1963 106 1.22 Political Persecution, Red Square, Harbin, 1966 109 Notes 111 1.23 Street Execution of a Viet Cong Prisoner, Saigon, 1968 112 Notes 114 1.24 Industrial Poisoning, Minamata, 1972 115 Notes 116 1.25 Police Beating,Los Angeles, 1992 118 Notes 119 1.26 The Situation Room, Washington, DC, 2011 121 Notes 123 PART TWO RE-THINKING THE HISTORY OF NEWS PICTURES 124 INTRODUCTION 126 Notes 128 News Pictures and Press Genres 129 2.1 Not Just a Pretty Picture: Fashion as News 130 The rise of fashion news 133 The expanding audience for fashion news 134 Fashion as international news—Paris asfashion capital 135 Photography and the fashion news picture 135 Notes 136 2.2 Celebrity Photos and Stolen Moments 137 The rhetoric of the stolen image 139 The tabloids and the stolen image 140 Notes 142 2.3 Pictorial Press Reportageand Censorship in the First World War 144 Notes 150 2.4 Illustrating Sports, or the Invention of the Magazine* 152 Notes 158 2.5 After the Event: The Challenges of Crime Photography 160 Notes 165 News Picture Media 166 2.6 News Pictures in the Early Years of Mass Visual Culture in New York: Lithographs and the Penny Press 167 The great New York fire of 1835 167 Picturing a sex murder 170 Currier’s awful conflagration 171 Notes 174 2.7 Beautiful Contradictions: News Pictures and Modern Magazines 175 Notes 181 2.8 “Public Forum of the Screen”: Modernity, Mobility, and Debate at the Newsreel Cinema 182 Notes 187 2.9 “See it Now”: Television News 189 Notes 195 2.10 Collective Self-Representation and the News: Torture at Abu Ghraib 197 Notes 200 News Picture Time 202 2.11 Adrift: The Time and Space of the News in Géricault’s Le Radeau de La Méduse 203 Notes 209 2.12 Snap-Shot:After Bullet Hit Gaynor 211 Notes 216 2.13 Rotogravure and the Modern Aesthetic of News Reporting 218 Photography and photogravure 219 Designing for the rotating copper cylinder 221 The news photograph and rotogravure 222 Notes 225 2.14 A Short History of Wire Service Photography 227 Notes 231 Speaking of News Pictures 233 2.15 “Famished for News Pictures”: Mason Jackson, The Illustrated London News and the Pictorial Spirit 234 Notes 240 2.16 Capturing Scandal: Picturing the Sultan’s Harem in Turn-of-the-Century Morocco 242 Notes 248 2.17 Never Alone: Photo Editing and Collaboration 249 Notes 255 2.18 Look at those Lollipops! Integrating Color into News Pictures 257 Color in the news 259 Picturing the news in color 260 Notes 262 News Picture Connoisseurship 265 2.19 Horace Vernet’s Capture of the Smalah : Reportage and Actuality in the Early French Illustrated Press 266 Notes 272 2.20 Hindenburg Disaster Pictures: Awarding a Multifaceted Icon 273 Getting the big picture 275 Notes 279 2.21 An Era of Photographic Controversy: Edward Steichen at the MoMA 280 Notes 285 2.22 Photojournalism: A Formal Paradigm for Contemporary Art* 287 Artistic outcomes 287 Curatorial practices 289 Notes 291 2.23 Uneasy Witnesses:Broomberg, Chanarin, and Photojournalism’s Expanded Field 293 Notes 299 SELECTED BIBLIOGRAPHY 301 INDEX 310 "Powerful and often controversial, news pictures promise to make the world at once immediate and knowable. Yet while many great writers and thinkers have evaluated photographs of atrocity and crisis, few have sought to set these images in a broader context by defining the rich and diverse history of news pictures in their many forms. For the first time, this volume defines what counts as a news picture, how pictures are selected and distributed, where they are seen and how we critique and value them. Presenting the best new thinking on this fascinating topic, this book considers the news picture over time, from the dawn of the illustrated press in the nineteenth century, through photojournalism's heyday and the rise of broadcast news and newsreels in the twentieth century and into today's digital platforms. It examines the many kinds of images: sport, fashion, society, celebrity, war, catastrophe and exoticism; and many mediums, including photography, painting, wood engraving, film and video. Packed with the best research and full colour-illustrations throughout, this book will appeal to students and readers interested in how news and history are key sources of our rich visual culture"-- Résumé de l'éditeur