possible for several views to be taken of a single incident. O’Sullivan took three photographs of a Civil War staff meeting near Massapomax Church. Virginia, on May 21, 1864, alike except for the position of General Grant: by viewing the three in succession we almost have the illusion of motion. In a similar 1-2-3 fashion. Brady photographed the hanging of the Lincoln conspirators. Full use of chronological sequences in magazines, however, awaited halftone techniques as rapid as photography.
On the occasion of the one-hundredth birthday of the French scientist Marie-Eugene Chevreul in 1886, Nadar's son Paul took a series of exposures
paul nadar: “The Art of Living a Hundred Years: three interviews with M. Chevreul . . . on the eve of his 1o1st year.” From Le Journal illustre, September 5, 1886 of him in conversation with his secretary and with Nadar pere, which were published as a “photo-interview” in Le Journal illustre for September 5, 1886. A stenographer noted the very words which Chevreul spoke at each exposure, and these were printed as captions. A second photo-interview was made two years later of General Georges Boulanger; some of the pictures were circular. They had been taken with one of the first Kodak cameras.
Perhaps the first magazine which was deliberately planned to exploit this type of photography was the Illustrated American. In its first issue, dated February 22, 1890, the publisher stated that “its special aim will be to develop the possibilities, as yet almost unexplored, of the camera and the various processes that reproduce the work of the camera.” The first number carried six photographs of the U. S. Navy, twenty-one of the Westminster Kennel Club Bench Show, eight of the Chicago Post Office, fifteen of a production of As You Like It, six of historical sites in Bordentown, New Jersey, fourteen to illustrate “A Trip to Brazil,” and five showing the latest millinery. Of a layout of twelve photographs of the Chicago Public Library in a subsequent issue the editors pointed out: “These are no fancy sketches; they are the actual life of the place reproduced upon paper, and they tell more than words could of the immense usefulness of the institution.”
But the Illustrated American found that it could not rely upon photographs alone. Month by month more and more words appeared in its pages, until it had lost its original character.
The same tendency can be observed in other picture magazines. The Mid-Week Pictorial, founded in 1914 by the New York Times as an outlet for the flood of war photographs which were arriving from Europe, was at first so dominantly photographic that the letterpress was limited to captions of one or, at the most, two lines. By 1915 the captions had become deeper, and there was a good amount of writing; before the war was over, feature articles had become numerous and drawings appeared frequently; emphasis on pictures had given way to the illustration of literary essays.
The idea of a purely photographic magazine was revived in 1936 by Henry Luce, publisher of Time and Fortune. The new magazine was envisaged as the Show Book of the World. Its purpose was stated in a prospectus:
To see life, to see the world; to eyewitness great events; to watch the faces of the poor and the gestures of the proud; to see strange things — machines, armies, multitudes, shadows in the jungle and on the moon; to see man’s work — his paintings, towers, and discoveries; to see things a thousand miles away, things hidden behind
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| henry olen: Ike Williams knocks out Jesse Flores, 1948. Courtesy New York Daily News |
walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to; the women that men love and many children; to see and to take pleasure in seeing; to see and be amazed; to see and be instructed.
To accomplish this ideal, the editors proposed to replace the “haphazard” taking and publishing of pictures with the “mind-guided camera,” and to “harness the main stream of optical consciousness of our time.”
The magazine was named upon its appearance Life. Its contents showed two types of pictures: spot news photographs, supplied for the most part by news agencies, and feature stories, written and photographed to order. What distinguished Life from earlier picture magazines was the number of pictures which it published and the theory of the “mind-guided camera.” The typical
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| weegee: Tenement fire, Brooklyn, 1939. The Museum of Modern Art |
picture essay is the co-operative work of editors and staff photographers. A story is decided upon, background research done, and a shooting script is prepared to give the photographer the general type of pictures needed, their mood, and their purpose. Many more photographs are taken than will be used, for it is hardly possible to visualize the material which the photographer will find when he starts work. From the stack of prints delivered by the laborators, the editors choose those they consider will best tell the story.
This approach lends itself to forceful statements and to clear exposition. Unfortunately it also tends to overemphasize the caption. John R. Whiting, in his Photography is a Language, made an illuminating experiment: he reprinted. in sequence and without the accompanying photographs, the cap-
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| ray r. platnick: Coffee for the exhausted conquerors of Engebi Island, 1944. Photographed on duty with U.S. Coast Guard |
tions of a typical Life picture essay. The result was a somewhat telegraphic, but completely coherent and readily grasped personality story to which the photographs were embellishments. Indeed, as Whiting states, “It is very often the caption you remember when you think you are telling someone about a picture in a magazine.”
In an effort to retain the informal quality of the miniature camera and the detail of the larger camera, the editors of Life have encouraged the use of synchroflash technique. In contrast Picture Post, founded in London in 1938, and originally edited by Stefan Lorant, formerly of the Munich Illustrierte
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| eucene smith: Saipan — Mother and child fleeing from cave, 1944. Courtesy Life |
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| steichen: Paul Robeson as “Emperor Jones,” 1933. Courtesy Conde-Nast Publications, Inc. |
Zeitung, has preferred to use the miniature camera. Although the results do not compare in clarity to most photographs published in Life and Look, the “candid" approach gives spontaneity and directness. Even though they are not infrequently posed, the pictures consistently appear "natural. The Picture Post photographers will go anywhere — in the King’s castle, to political meetings, to pubs, railroad stations, operating rooms, bringing back vivid pictures. The magazine does not carry spot news photographs; it is devoted entirely to essays.
Remarkable photographs have been made on magazine assignments, and often single pictures are remembered long after the story has been forgotten. Perhaps the majority of photographs of the last war which the public has seen were made by magazine photographers or under their influence. Life ran a school for army photographers, and sent its own cameramen to the front: Eliot Elisofon was in North Africa; William Vandivert was in London during the Blitz and in India; Margaret Bourke-White was in Italy and Russia; Eugene Smith was in the Pacific where, at the cost of serious in jury, he produced some of the finest war photographs; Robert Capa covered the invasion and landed with paratroopers. Captain Edward Steichen, U.S.N.R., set up a special photographic project in the Navy to record the war at sea, and under his command were many photographers who had received their training on magazine assignments.