What are the function of photo journalism?

Answer 1

Even in our internet age, photographs can be very powerful. They are in many cases the way we remember a historic event years later. Photo journalists are thus an essential part of a news story: the story may be in words, but the photo is a lasting rememberance of the people or places in that story. A photo journalist goes out with a reporter to cover a story, and shoots pictures to accompany the story. Some photos are simply what happened at the scene-- people standing around after a car crash or a house fire; people hugging at a wedding; a large crowd gathering to hear a famous speaker.

But there are also iconic photographs that show children running from being napalmed in Vietnam, or a woman with an exhausted and sad expression as she contemplates her hungry family during the Great Depression, or shocked runners looking at the street after the Boston Marathon bombing. There are photos of the daily lives of presidents (like President Kennedy) or celebrities (like Princess Diana) or photographs that show an event and evoke an emotion in the viewer (like the devastation of a tsunami or tornado); we still look at these photos years later and are amazed at their power, because they take us back to that event and to that specific moment in time. So photo journalism is another way to preserve history, and as such, it is extremely valuable, since what is in the frame and in the shot is what we will remember.

Answer 2

The function of a photojournilist is to tell a story with one image or through a few different images. Images need to be newsworthy and should tell their own story.

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