Since their inception, photojournalism and art photography have served distinctly different purposes. Photojournalism, a mass communication medium, has captured and presented newsworthy events on the pages of newspapers and magazines read by a diverse popular audience, while art photography has addressed the limited audience attuned to its exclusive social and aesthetic codes. What rationale enables art world members to open assiduously maintained boundaries to incorporate mass media images? When photojournalism is reframed by the art world, what repercussions are felt within photojournalism?

In what follows I examine the communicative frame placed around photojournalism that makes it possible to bridge the separation between mass and elite media, reportorial and artistic approaches to photography. In the first set of examples I analyze the rhetoric invoked by art historians and museum curators, grounding the attention they give to photojournalism within art world norms. With the second set of examples I probe the way photojournalists themselves have packaged their work with respect to the norms and conventions of fine art photography. The analysis draws upon earlier research (Schwartz 1986, 1987) which sets forth a set of characteristics defining the social and aesthetic codes governing the art world of photography. Briefly, the characteristics outlined include the following: 1) Art photography is tied to other art media; members of the art world of photography liken their work to that of artists working in other media, such as painting or sculpture 2) Art photography responds to its own history and traditions; requiring the construction of significant predecessors and related art movements 3) Art photography has its own vocabulary: many of the terms used to describe art photographers' work refers to their special vision or sight (as opposed to the camera's "sight"), and the revelatory nature of the picture-making process

4) Art photography conveys the ideas of the artist, not the reality of the subject 5) Art photography is innovative, constantly seeking and employing new ideas and approaches, 6) Art photography is intensely personal, inextricably ties to the life forces of the artist, and 7) Art photography is ambiguous or mysterious; it's meanings resist easy interpretation, requiring viewers to actively probe and build a personal response to the significances found in the image.

Beaumont Newhall's The History of Photography

As the first curator of photography at the Museum of Modern Art, Beaumont Newhall has played an influential role in the construction of the art history of photography. His book, The History of Photography was first published as the catalogue accompanying the exhibition "Photography 1839-1937". The book has been revised and enlarged five times since its initial publication in 1937, and it continues to be one of the definitive survey texts in the history of art photography. Newhall added a chapter on photojournalism in the most recent edition, released in 1982. Newhall condenses the history of photojournalism for this survey, beginning as photo-histories typically do, with a recitation of the technological changes influencing the directions taken.

Newhall heroicizes the abilities of photojournalists, attributing success to boldness, strong nerves and complete mastery of the camera. Photojournalism begins, in this account, with the German picture magazines of the 1920s and develops further through the pages of Life and Look magazines. As in other chapters, Newhall produces a list of names of the most significant individual photographers, but unlike the other chapters, his discussion of their work follows the mention of the news events being covered, that is, a succession of wars. He moves from war to portraiture, casting his net broadly to include editorial fashion photography within the purview of photojournalism.

The difficulty Newhall shares with art historians interested in photojournalism concerns the criteria used to cull out individuals worthy of special attention. Daily newspapers do not offer an easy focus of attention--the staffs and assignments are varied, and the number of newspapers overwhelming. Magazines have offered an easier source of worthy practitioners, reducing the numbers considerably. Historical monographs concerning photojournalism have focused almost exclusively on magazine photographers. Newhall makes brief reference to the division of labor characterizing most photojournalistic work, but nevertheless, he still discusses photographers as if they were the sole authors responsible for the appearance of their stories.  The concept of authorship is crucial in establishing the artistry of the photographer and the significance of the image.

Newhall gives considerable space to his discussion of a single picture by W. Eugene Smith that appeared as a part of a Life story called the Spanish Village. He quotes his wife's description of the picture from an article she wrote for Camera:

It has been said that the Thread Maker "is at once a village woman at work and an image haunting and eternal as a drawing by Michelangelo of one of the Three Fates" (1982: 263).

Invoking Michelangelo (and generalizing the source of the comparison), Newhall explicitly ties the picture to the fine arts, asserting the artistic integrity of this single example of journalistic photography, extracted from its original sequence. Here, the author of the picture occupies a position equal to Michelangelo, and the photograph is imbued with a mysteriousness often evoked when artists discuss good photography.

John Szarkowski's From the Picture Press

John Szarkowski has served as the Museum of Modern Art's third curator of photography, assuming the post after Edward Steichen's retirement in 1964. He selected pictures for the 1973 exhibition From the Picture Press primarily from the files of the New York Daily News, the UPI and the AP. In taking this unconventional approach, Szarkowski eschews the greater prestige and visibility conferred upon magazine photojournalists, seeking pictures from what is generally considered to be a more mundane source. He explains his strategy in this way:

The present book, and the exhibition from which it derives, are based on the premise that many of the most original and compelling news photographs describe events of minor historical significance, and that the formal and iconographical character of such pictures has made a significant contribution to the development of the modern visual vocabulary (1973:2).

Szarkowski asks the viewer to regard everyday images from the newspaper within the same appreciative frame brought to other art works. The original captions appearing with the pictures are reproduced at the end of the book, stripping the photographs bare "in order to allow the pictures to fend for themselves." In this way, the formal characteristics of the photographs can receive maximal attention.

At the conclusion of his catalogue essay Szarkowski characterizes modern news pictures as follows:

They are (or seem) unimpeachably frank; they have redefined prior standards of privacy, and the privilege of anonymity; they deal not with the intellectual significance of facts, but with their emotional content; they have directed journalism toward a subjective and intensely human focus. As images, the photographs are shockingly direct, and at the same time mysterious, elliptical, and fragmentary, reproducing the texture and flavor of experience without explaining its meaning. They have worn the aspect of fact, proven nothing, and asked the best of questions.

Through his wrenching decontextualization of daily newspaper photographs (first by hanging them on the museum's walls, then by stripping them of their captions) Szarkowski makes them mysterious, and the concluding lines of his essay assert their contradictory nature. Once the recipients of little attention or scrutiny, the exhibition reframes the photographs as objects worthy of aesthetic appreciation, and hence, worthy of inclusion in the museum's exhibition program.

Art historians and curators have directed their attention to the work of noteworthy individuals whose work stands outside the mainstream traditions of art photography with some regularity. In these cases, the rationale for drawing photographers and their work into the art world usually revolves around the special talents of the individual and the resultant merits of his or her pictures. The title "artist" may be bestowed on these singular individuals. Newhall's (1982) chapter on photojournalism exemplifies this approach, and Grundberg's article cited above takes the same tactic. Grundberg makes the pronouncement "photojournalism is back" because of the simultaneous appearance of a number of retrospective exhibitions at art museums and galleries representing famous photojournalists' careers. He writes:

On the agenda are major retrospectives of the legendary careers of Robert Capa and W. Eugene Smith...and new insights into the works of Henri Cartier-Bresson, Andre Kertesz and William Klein, each of whom has influenced today's photojournalistic style.

Curators concern themselves with the intellectual and aesthetic coherence of the exhibitions they mount, because exhibitions demonstrate their scholarship, connoisseurship and aesthetic taste to members of the art community. Organizing a group exhibition of photojournalists' work presents the larger challenge, by far. Some logic must be found which ties together the diverse array of styles, subjects and approaches presented to the curator. Failure to do so is likely to provoke criticism, as one curator remarked in reference to Szarkowski's Picture Press show: "It doesn't really hold together; it's quirky, just like Szarkowski and [Diane] Arbus [who assisted curating the show].'' Adam Weinberg faced that challenge when he curated an ambitious travelling exhibition that opened at the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, in March 1986.

Adam Weinberg's On the Line: The New Color Photojournalism

Even though the exhibition toured only small cities across the U.S., On the Line: The New Color Photojournalism received note in nationally distributed publications like the New York Times, Time, American Photographer , and Afterimage. Weinberg's view of photojournalism, represented by the show and the exhibition catalogue that has been in distribution since 1986, has influenced subsequent critical writing. Reference to "new color photojournalism" and "new photojournalism" can be found in the literature on photography. The show takes as its point of departure the tension between art photography and photojournalism. Weinberg argues that the "generation" of photographers currently in their 30s and 40s are

"...on the line" between two worlds. Not easily classified as simply art photographers or photojournalists, these are among a significant number of hybrid photographers whose work defies strict categorization and points to the inadequacy of labels used in the history of photography (1986:16).

According to Weinberg, the enduring tension between art and photojournalism has come to the fore because "in recent years, much of art photography has become impoverished," concerning itself with "narrowly conceived issues of form and style" addressing little of significance extrinsic to itself. Postmodernist photography has drawn renewed attention to content, but Weinberg, argues, its complexly encoded messages reach only an extremely narrow elite. While "postmodern art photographers themselves are appropriating the styles and structures of photojournalism as a method for rediscovering content and meaning" photojournalists have no need to search for content. Instead, they "have assimilated the aesthetic lessons of art photography and are well-versed in the visual language of color photographic materials" (l986:19; 21).

Weinberg suggests that art photography has reached a crisis point motivating many photographers to seek new approaches to their work. He proposes an antidote to the dissatisfaction growing within the art world by drawing together and presenting what he frames as an overtly artistic approach to photojournalism that bridges the divide between form and content. Weinberg's curatorial stance is innovative, a quality often valued within the art world, and in his extensive catalogue essay he offers a thorough, if somewhat problematic, rationale for the show and the selections he has made. To choose work for the show, Weinberg went to a number of photo agencies in New York City, reviewing the files of photographs housed at each.² As Weinberg suggests, photo agencies often represent a diverse group of photographers, some of whom see themselves primarily as artists and not photojournalists.

Weinberg's selections drew from among the self-professed artists as well as the photojournalists. He chose pictures that seemed particularly striking to him3; some of them were published in the press, while others were never intended for the mass media, representing the photographer's "personal work". When faced with a photographer like Harry Gruyaert, who says "There are some people doing photojournalism which I don't," Weinberg argues for his inclusion in the show as follows:

...what perhaps qualifies him in the broadest sense as a photojournalist are the facts that he is a photographer for Magnum [Photos, Inc., a New York picture agency]; that subject identifiable by location and date is significant to understanding his work; and that he takes a somewhat oppositional attitude to the inwardly focused concerns of artists (1986: 23)

What holds the show together are the linkages among the pictures selected by the curator and a format that highlights their logic. 4 Through this process the curator makes what is generally regarded as a definitive statement on the medium and its current practices.

Weinberg suggests a parallel between the "new photojournalism" and the "new journalism" of the mid-1960s, arguing that new photojournalists question the traditional viewpoint that photojournalism should objectively (but vividly) record and present events. This parallel paves the way for an acknowledgment of the photojournalist as a subjective mediator, the author of the pictures he or she produces, and merges the oppositional stances, art versus reportage. Artistic photojournalists seek greater control over their work than the mass media allows, and according to Weinberg, many of the new photojournalists publish their work in books in order to maintain a greater level of authorial control. Offering a way to apprehend these photographs, Weinberg suggests:

...the way to interpret these images seems not to be in re-establishing boundaries, which at best are difficult to articulate and in practice impossible to enforce, but to locate their meaning by understanding the images themselves--the stylistic and formal characteristics as well as the intrinsic meaning of the content--learning about the photographers and their intentions, and comprehending the cultural, historical and ideological contexts in which the photographs were taken and later viewed (1986: 31)

In order to view photojournalism in the manner Weinberg suggests, press pictures must be regarded within an aesthetic frame, more common to photographs seen in books or on gallery walls than in magazines or on the newspaper page. The spade work necessary to reach this level of understanding is extensive, entailing a familiarity with the aesthetic codes of art photography, the complex contexts in which the image is situated, as well as biographical information about the photographer, in short, the kind of knowledge generally accumulated by art historians, or critics, or connoisseurs. The casual practice of newspaper or magazine reading would necessarily be replaced by serious study, transforming the roles and functions of photojournalism.

Rather than root his discussion of the rise of color photojournalism in a consideration of economic and technological changes influencing the press, Weinberg highlights the aesthetic impetus leading to the adoption of color. He suggests that Ernst

Haas and Eliot Elisofon, two magazine photographers who "turned to painting for inspiration and education," prefigure the current generation of color photojournalists, and through his argument Weinberg constructs a tradition of work from which the current photographers may be seen to have emerged. Even though none of the photographers represented in the exhibition mention Haas or Elisofon as influential figures for them, "they have more in common with these predecessors than they may realize" (1986:38), according to Weinberg. Larry Burrows' color photographs from Vietnam stand between the older generation of color photojournalists and the current group. Burrows took a more subjective approach to his work, Weinberg argues, saying that "Burrows was in fact among the first photojournalists to exploit the new subjectivity in color" (1986:39). In his description of a war photograph by Burrows, Weinberg discusses it in purely aesthetic terms, making special note of Burrows' use of blood in the color palette of the picture:

...Burrows used the monochromatic tones of this depressing battlefield scene to his advantage. In such pictures, only the white of bandages, the red of flags or blood visually accent the image (1986:39).

When Weinberg uses quotes from the photographers represented in the exhibition, their discussions of color photography evince the rhetorical code employed by art photographers (see Schwartz, 15 1986). Relating the choice of color to his life experiences, Gilles Peress is quoted as saying that he chooses between black and white or color based on two factors:

One is subject. The subject wants it. It's also, well, your art's (part of your) life cycle. I'm sure you've gone through cycles where you were more inside your head and others where you were more inside your body....(1986:41)

Another photographer, Alex Webb, says "...I think I have a special color relationship with the tropical world" and according to Jean-Marie Simon, "Color reflects the way I'm seeing things. I don't see in black and white. I see in color." These quotes, abstracted from the text of interviews Weinberg conducted with the photographers, suggest a clear linkage between their approach to photojournalism and art photography. The terms in which these photographers discuss when or why they choose to shoot in color offer an additional rationale for bringing them into the art world.

Drawing the threads of his argument together, Weinberg asserts that each of the photographers represented in the exhibition "has developed, albeit unconsciously, a signature style of color photography" (1986:45). Style becomes a marker of the photographer's role in the creation of the image, divorcing his or her work from the traditions of photojournalism, which is often viewed as transparent, without a style:

...the stamp of a personal photographic style enables the viewer to sense the photographer's presence within the frame; the boundary of supposed objectivity is thus crossed (1986:45).

When a photographer's signature style seems elusive he or she may use color in a "non-stylistic" manner, according to Weinberg, and Mary Ellen Mark's photographs are used to exemplify his point. Mark "uses color in such a literal sense that it seems to be naturalistic," he writes. In Mark's work, "Color is found color." Weinberg asserts that the obvious presence of an individual style, which may be framed as a rejection of style or a non-style, draws the photographer's work closer to the art world than to press photography, where the identity of the photographer, and his or her personal vision is considered more or less irrelevant.

In the remainder of the catalogue essay, Weinberg describes a number of the photographs from the exhibition in almost purely formal terms, employing the conventional codes of connoisseurship generally used by curators. In these descriptions the subject of the picture plays a minor role, despite the claim that the new color photojournalism joins together form and content in new and significant ways. Invoking a quality highly valued by members of the art world of photography, the ambiguity of the image receives particular note in this description:

Alex Webb is a master of the shadow. He uses it as an antidote to the intensity of the reds, blues and yellows in the Mexican urban landscape. It is as if too much of the sun-drenched hues would blind us; the shadows are the squinting of the sun; they enable the viewer to better see the subject even though there is less of the subject to see. These photographs of darkness are ambiguous (1986:47).

For the On the Line exhibition, the photographs were enlarged to more than 16x20 inches, individually framed and hung. The images appeared outside of their accustomed mass media context. Unlike typical media presentations of these photographs, no news story surrounded them; only a brief caption, or the identifier "Untitled" appeared alongside. Each photograph, however, was labeled with the name of the photographer, the locale represented, and the date the image was made, a convention almost always used to identify art works displayed in galleries and museums. Each picture was presented as an individual example drawn from the photographer's larger body of work. Photographic sequences, utilizing groups of pictures as in magazine photo stories, did not appear.

Hung in this way, the most salient information contextualizing the photographs was their authorship and privileged status, affirmed by their presence on gallery walls. Seeing the photographs hung on expansive white walls, within space defined by the museum gallery, viewers encountered large color photographs that invited aesthetic appreciation and, possibly, awe. In this way photojournalism is transfigured, emerging as contemporary art. In the foreword to the exhibition catalogue Gloria Emerson offers viewers these ideas about the aesthetic experience of viewing the pictures in the show:

Perhaps as you look at the photographs in On the Line there is one that will oblige you to stand very still and the information it imparts, and the sensation it induces, might be lovely or puzzling or ghastly. Photographs have a mystery: they cannot give us the beginning or the end of the story, the reasons for an event, any explanation at all. They do not reveal what will come next. And yet nothing is new, what we see is familiar: the man with the gun, the gussied-up blonde woman refusing the defeat of age, the wearied baseball players seen in On the Line are not strange. What is startling, and often oddly shocking, is our understanding of them, the sudden intimacy, the great and terrible contrasts between their lives and our own (1986:10).

The aesthetic frame placed around photojournalism in On the Line combats traditional conceptions of the medium. The artist, ever-present in the photograph, replaces the anonymous photo-reporter, exchanging "explanation" for "mystery".

Photojournalism Meets the Art World

There is nothing new in the observation that the art world often stretches beyond its normal boundaries to include new work and new subjects, vivifying what sometimes becomes a stale, circumscribed arena of discourse. What merits further investigation, however, is the impact of these art world safaris on their quarry. What, if anything, results from the interface between the art world and the mass media, between fine art photography and photojournalism?

 One change that seems to have sprung from the surfeit of recent gallery and museum shows of photojournalism, is that photojournalism has become increasingly exhibitable. Two photo agencies celebrating anniversaries of their incorporation have recently chosen to launch exhibitions of their members' work. Contact Press Images organized the show Contact: Photojournalism Since Vietnam in 1987, on the anniversary of the agency's tenth year in existence. In conjunction with the show, Contact distributes an audio-visual program. In order to handle these, and future activities, the agency introduced a "special projects department" with its own staff dedicated to the coordination of exhibitions and other programs outside the range of typical agency work.

Contact distributes a package of promotional materials to individuals targeted at potential host institutions. Included in the packet, the descriptions of the public response to the show boast "over a half million people have viewed Photojournalism Since Vietnam in prestigious galleries in North and South America, Europe and Asia." The artistic quality of the show becomes a part of the sales pitch:

By giving news events the permanence and haunting quality of art, the show enables viewers relate to the photographs immediately. The images and their essence are identifiable to persons of all cultures from a Chinese peasant to a French critic.

The promotional materials promise high attendance rates "due to the wide array of media coverage generated by Contact and its vast network of agents," and demonstrating its claim, magazine and newspaper articles on Contact and the exhibition are included.

"The Special Projects Department is prepared to take Photojournalism Since Vietnam even further," the promo book entices, suggesting a variety of events that might be organized in conjunction with the show. Nested within the list, a subtle pitch is made encouraging the purchase of photographs in the show: "Images from Photojournalism Since Vietnam can become part of your institution's permanent collection." The presentation closes with this emphatic statement:

Photojournalism Since Vietnam has put photojournalism on the map. In cities where it has already been presented, the media and art communities recognized photojournalism as a viable and important form of communication. Contact: Photojournalism Since Vietnam --the exhibition, audio-visual show, educational program, publicity and sponsorship network--will give photography new vitality in your museum or gallery.

Contact has devoted considerable effort to curating and distributing this tenth anniversary show and its array of auxiliary activities. The prestige conferred upon photographers exhibiting in museums may be a motivating force behind the hard sell evidenced here, but above and beyond their cachet, exhibitions draw attention to the work of agency members and to the agency itself. The exhibition generates publicity, advertising the special expertise of its members, enhancing their stature. The show and the media coverage it generates suggest that these photographers are among the best photojournalists available.

Not surprisingly, in an article on the Contact agency published in Graphis, a trade publication targeting design professionals, Contact director Robert Pledge expresses his current interest in curating exhibitions. In addition to the Contact show, Pledge has put together an exhibition "commemorating the 30th anniversary" of the World Press Photo Holland Foundation, as well as Life magazine's "tribute to photography's 150th anniversary." The article promises additional exhibitions in the future, a product of Pledge's excitement with regard to this new activity:

 ...as the magazine market shrinks and competition for pages increases, he [Pledge] feels that an increasing number of photojournalists are looking for an alternative means in which (sic) to show their work--be it through books or exhibitions. And at an exhibition, people look at pictures differently; there's a much greater potential for impact, which is clearly what excites Pledge. Contact is now in the process of planning a number of events for the future, including a major exhibitional foray into China that combines workshops and an exhibition of their photographers' work with shows organized by World Press and well-respected competitor Magnum.

At ten years old, Contact is a relative newcomer among photo agencies. Perhaps the most venerated of all, Magnum Photos celebrated its 40th anniversary in 1987, and in anticipation of this milestone in the agency's history, its members proposed mounting an exhibition. The Magnum show, due to open in New York City in November 1989, is called In Our Time: The World as Seen by Magnum Photographers. Accompanying the behemoth exhibition, an equally expansive book, over 400 pages long (with a list price of $60), chronicles the agency's history in three lengthy essays commissioned for the publication. In addition, the photographs in the exhibition appear reproduced in the mid-section of the book. While Contact organized its own show and aggressively markets it, the Magnum show was curated by museum professionals from U.S. and France, and the exhibition was organized and sponsored by the American Federation of the Arts, the Minneapolis Institute of the Arts, and Eastman Kodak.

In each of the three essays an account of the formation of the photo agency appears, and in each essay a narrative progresses from the first meeting of Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson and David Seymour, to the establishment of the agency, to its successes. Much of the discussion concerns the characters of the two central figures, Capa and Cartier-Bresson. Capa is depicted as the true photojournalist, the ideas man who made the right connections and the right decisions, while Cartier-Bresson appears as the artist who acted as the guiding conscience for the group. The repetition of these parables about the founding fathers drives home the point that Magnum has its own significant history, and that the agency owes its present stature to this exceptional legacy. Each of the essayists offers his view of the special status Magnum has attained.

In the opening paragraphs of the first essay in the book, William Manchester employs a strategy often used to distinguish artist-photographers from the rank and file of picture makers. In this case, however, the rank and file are newspaper photojournalists. Manchester writes:

As a young Baltimore Sun reporter in the years immediately following World War II, I fell easily into the traditional, symbiotic relationship between newspapermen and news photographers. Knowing something of their trade, and eager to know more, I began feeling cameramen out on matters then being discussed in the journals of photography. Their replies were exasperatingly vague. Slowly it dawned on me that either they didn't understand my questions or didn't know the answers.

It had been naive of me to expect more. Just as journalists and public school teachers comprise America's intellectual proletariat, so do newspaper cameramen occupy the lower rungs of their craft. There are exceptions, but in the main they lack imagination, a sense of composition, and an awareness of what Henri Cartier-Bresson calls the "decisive moment" --an intuitive gift for knowing precisely when to push the button. The instinct is essential to great photography. You cannot learn it. You cannot fake it. You have to have been born with it, and most of the men lugging Sun Speed-Graphics around didn't even know it existed (1989:11)

In these opening paragraphs, Manchester simultaneously mystifies the process of making aesthetically successful news photographs and denigrates the abilities of the majority of practitioners in the field.

As opposed to these poor creatures, the Magnum photographers instill such awe that "a single essay cannot do justice to them." Of these photojournalists Manchester writes:

The photographers whose triumphs are represented on these pages need no advocates, no champions, not even an introduction. Their work stands proudly alone. Created in fractions of a second, it stands here, enshrined in time tl989:18).

Manchester provides a historical account of the evolution of photography, jumping from early technological innovations to a succession of art movements, to documentary and magazine photojournalism. The work of the Magnum photographers appears at the end of this elliptically constructed historical trajectory. Situated in this way, Magnum stands at the end of the line of succession in the art world of photography. The essay concludes with a tribute to the photographers in the exhibition: "we are enriched by their vision," and the Magnum photographers who were "killed in action" "live on in our imagination, our gratitude, our awe."

Another theme that runs through these essays is the independence of the photographers themselves. The photojournalists drawn to Magnum chafe at the constraints placed on their work by the mass media, and as members of Magnum they maintain ownership of their negatives and authority with the regard to the use of their pictures. The essays suggest that the individualism of Magnum members sets these photojournalists apart from others. A rigorous set of hurdles faces photojournalists who aspire to membership and the exclusivity of the group is offered as evidence of Magnum's elite status.

Fred Ritchin, former picture editor for the New York Times magazine, contributes the final essay. His discussion follows the pattern established by the two preceding essays; he begins with an account of the illustrious beginnings of the agency and a series of testimonials lauding the singular contributions made by Magnum photographers. But Ritchin's essay continues along lines that run parallel to Adam Weinberg's catalogue essay from the color photojournalism show. Using Capa and Cartier-Bresson as exemplars of opposing tendencies, Ritchin brings the art versus photojournalism dichotomy to bear on the current generation of Magnum photographers. He reports that at Magnum's 1988 annual meeting "some of the younger photographers...found themselves in heated discussion...asking themselves not for the first time the question of whether they are really journalists or artists" (1989:423).

From this point, the essay wends its way through familiar territory, demonstrating the distinctiveness of these photographers and their work by setting them apart from other photojournalists as a hybrid group, "on the line", in Weinberg's terms. Ritchin invokes a definition of a photojournalist offered in 1955 by Inge Bondi, who worked on Magnum's staff for twenty years. She called a photojournalist "a reporter, commentator and sometimes even a poet rolled into one." Ritchin builds upon the definition and writes:

In its simplicity this is an excellent description of Magnum and other like-minded photographers, and less a description of conventional photojournalism, with its comparatively limited goals that preclude, for the most part, commentary and poetry (1989:425).

Magnum photographers are said to challenge professional norms that dictate an impersonal, objective stance towards the subject, and Ritchin exemplifies their independence through a series of descriptions of unconventional projects pursued by Magnum photographers.

As with the artist-photojournalists of the On the Line show (many of whom belonged to Magnum) Ritchin describes the photographers represented by Magnum as authors, responsible for the meanings communicated by their photographs. The goals they pursue require them to stand outside photojournalism's mainstream.

As many of Magnum's photographers have chosen to emphasize their own personal vision, working at greater length and complexity, they have had to not only look for forms of presentation other than the magazine, but to develop-and refine skills that go beyond the traditional parameters of the photojournalist as producer of images. In order to assert more individual control over the presentation of their photographs, circumventing a traditional dependency on others in the editorial process, they have had to work to understand the relationship of photographs to each other, of the effect of layout and of text, of visual syntax, in order to implement their own points of view. Many have become, to a considerably larger extent, the authors of their own work, able themselves to direct the meanings of their photographs, to preserve ambiguities when wanted, to place the images in contexts which amplify, rather than redirect or constrict, their meanings. In this sense they continue to extend the Magnum tradition of independence (1989:441).

While Ritchin frames a growing interest in authoring independent projects as an individual choice, elected to satisfy the aesthetic or political needs of the photographer, the decreasing number of publication outlets available to photojournalists most likely plays an important role in motivating such a shift. Ritchin concludes his essay enumerating the changes that will befall photojournalism, and he predicts that Magnum photographers, viewed as the elite of their field, will play a leadership role in determining its future directions.

The three essays published in the massive Magnum volume combine to spell out the illustrious history of the agency and its privileged status. The individual members appear in the essayists' prose as committed photographic artists, whose talents and personal vision set them apart from the pack of photojournalists. Following from the rhetorical strategies employed by art historians and museum curators, photojournalists themselves have chosen to pursue activities and frame their work in ways that draw attention to their distinctiveness and elite status, both within and beyond the confines of photojournalism.

Conclusions

This analysis elaborates the frame placed around photojournalism that allows members of the art world to substantiate their interest in pictures which have traditionally been used and conceived of in oppositional terms. The abundance of recent attention directed towards photojournalism has yielded an explicit formulation and construction of an elite corps of photojournalists, the majority of whom belong to a small number of photo agencies in the U.S. and abroad. Evidence suggests that Magnum Photos has emerged as the premier agency, and its 40 year endurance and restrictive system of recruitment may very well figure into the special attention this agency has received. The construction of a photojournalism elite by the art world has taken its particular shape, in part, as a result of the relative ease of curating exhibits from photo agencies, rather than daily newspapers or wire services.⁵ The agencies are centrally located in New York City and agency files, a well-organized inventory of photographs available for purchase, offer curators an accessible archive from which to draw.

By definition, the elite group of photojournalists are set apart from the majority of practitioners in the field, and daily newspaper photographers have been cast in the role of unimaginative, aesthetically impoverished camera operators, different from their more sophisticated, style-conscious cousins This process of singling out a small group of noteworthy photographers parallels the separation of art photographers from the undifferentiated mass of photo-enthusiasts beginning around the turn of the century as the popularity of photography grew (Schwartz 1986). From those early distinctions a well-elaborated system of exclusive aesthetic and social codes emerged, functioning to erect boundaries between elite and popular activity. These codes have been employed in the current movement distinguishing "new" photojournalism from traditional practice, and artist-photojournalists have been portrayed as estranged from the mass media, critical of its use and control over the photographs and the meanings that they themselves produce. The "new" photojournalists challenge the norms of their profession and the authority invested in news photographs.

The tension between art and reportage has assumed center stage as photojournalism has entered the art arena. Central to arguments asserting the artistic integrity of the "new photojournalism" is the presence of the photographers' voice, allowing the viewer and the connoisseur to apprehend the persona of the author. Within this perspective, the conventions of subjectivity employed by the artist-photojournalist stand opposed to the conventions of objectivity used by the daily news photographer. The presence of the author could be explicated in terms of the political or social statement being articulated, but in the discussions reviewed here, authorship is asserted with regard to the presence of an explicit aesthetic style. Even a "non-style" (dangerously close to the conventions of objective reportage employed by many rank and file photojournalists) falls within the range of possible styles. The attention paid to authorial voice and to its manifestation in an explicit aesthetic places a premium on formal experimentation, elevating the significance of form over content. Success as in terms elaborated here, requires the development of, as Weinberg terms it, a "signature style".

Photojournalists' pictures have generally been expected to "tell a story", representing the significance of newsworthy events. This is accomplished either through a single image or a sequence of images combined into a photo page. In both cases a written story or captions help to ground the meanings conveyed by the pictures. But as photojournalism penetrates the boundaries of the art world, photographs are viewed singly, their only context provided by the gallery or book page. Text may be minimal or absent altogether, as in the From the Picture Press catalogue, the On the Line catalogue, or the Magnum book. Text often provides the context necessary to the understanding of the informational content encoded in the picture, but framed within the art world, the photograph's ambiguity, not its specificity, is valued and heightened through the style of presentation.

Seen as single noteworthy images, abstracted from the ongoing reality that gives rise to them, news photographs have become commodified. Pictures made by photojournalists, bereft of their media context become collectible objects. Aware of this trend, Life magazine opened a photo gallery in Manhattan, where the works of photojournalists shooting for the magazine can be displayed. And for the past few months advertisements have appeared in Life offering a vintage photo made by former staffer, Alfred Eisenstaedt for sale. The photograph, "V-J Day, Times Square 1945" can be purchased for $3,000. These new prints were made in 1979, but each is signed, one of a limited edition, transforming it from a news photograph into a precious object. The aura of the art world has been seized upon and employed as a marketing strategy. Exhibitions provide an avenue for publicity that brings photo agencies and their members fame and better, more lucrative assignments.

What impact does the prestige conferred upon select, photographers by the art world have on the photographers themselves? The reward systems that operate within the profession may not carry the same clout as validation earned in a social world marked by its elite status. Photojournalists may find greater inducements to establish a reputation outside of the boundaries of their profession, where photographers are often viewed as mere illustrators, less important to making news than their word colleagues. To what extent does the premium placed on the articulation of an individual style influence photojournalists' approaches to shooting, both in terms of the subjects they choose and the way they frame them? A perusal of photo books recently published by documentary photographers and photojournalists suggests a heightened concern with formal manipulation and an increased level of self-consciousness. Technological changes promise to alter the practice of photojournalism significantly. Still video cameras, electronic cameras utilizing computer disks instead of film stock, and digital computer manipulation all have the potential of undermining the photo-reporter's claim on truth. What is gained when photojournalists swap a rhetorical system built upon accuracy and objectivity, for another rhetorical system rooted in self-expression and subjectivity? With the de-staffing of magazines during the 1970s and 1980s, and the decrease in magazine pages available, photojournalists have been forced to build their careers as freelancers and entrepreneurs. Given the rapid succession of changes on the horizon, photojournalists may be faced with reinventing their profession. The influences at work in the redefinition of the field will warrant further scrutiny.

Notes

1. Personal communication, Carroll T. Hartwell, curator of photography, Minneapolis Institute of the Arts.

2. With the demise of Life and Look in the 1970s many magazine photographers found their publication outlets evaporating, and the current proliferation of photo agencies may have resulted, in part, from this change in the organization of magazine photography. With the reduced number of publications (when Life resumed publication it became a monthly, rather than a weekly magazine) magazine photojournalists have turned to other venues, taking on commercial assignments and corporate reports, publishing books and exhibiting their pictures in art galleries and museums.

3. Personal communication.

4. Carroll T. Hartwell approaches the selection process similarly. In early work on the Magnum photos exhibition, Hartwell proceeded by reviewing Magnum agency files, looking for qualities in the photographs he encountered which would make it possible to present a coherently linked group of pictures (personal communication).

5. Szarkowski's "quirky" show, From the Picture Press stands apart as a noteworthy exception to the rule.

References

Bulzone, Marisa (1988) "Contact Press Images." Graphis 44(257).

Grundberg, Andy (1985) "Photojournalism Makes a Comeback." New York Times, September 8.

Manchester, William (1989) In Our Time: The World As Seen By Magnum Photographers. New York: W. W. Norton.

Newhall, Beaumont (1982) The History of Photography. New York: The Museum of Modern Art.

Schwartz, Dona (1986) "Camera Clubs and Fine Art Photography: The

Social Construction of an Elite Code." Urban Life 15(2).

Schwartz, Dona (1987) "Doing the Ethnography of Visual Communication: The Rhetoric of Fine Art Photography." Research in Language and Social Interaction 21.

Sekula, Allan (1975) "On the Invention of Photographic Meaning." Artforum 36.

Szarkowski, John (1973) From the Picture Press. New York: The

Museum of Modern Art.

Taft, Robert (1938) Photography and the American Scene. New York:

Dover.

Weinberg, Adam D. (1986) On the Line: The New Color