American Photojournalism Comes of Age

Book excerpt: In American Photojournalism Comes of Age, Michael L. Carlebach discusses the ways in which photojournalists redefined the boundaries of publicity and privacy, fact and fabrication during the formative decades of the profession. He explains how more streamlined technologies and the public's growing faith in the camera's accuracy revolutionized - and dramatically increased - the presentation of visual news. The book describes the yellow journalism of the competing Pulitzer and Hearst newspapers, the muckraking efforts of photographers such as Jacob Riis to improve New York City's slums, World War I censorship that staged or faked many "news" photographs, and the rise of both the tabloid and documentary traditions. The author also tells how the increasingly centralized business of photo dissemination could make or break a photographer's career. --Publisher.