Jacob Rii's, a Danish American photographer, was heralded for how he revealed the seedy lower classes of New York. Having experienced poverty himself in the city he felt obliged to report the unsustainable living conditions that he and many others had to endure. This led to his endorsements of 'model tenements' in NYC to help provide better housing for the slums. He was also noted as the first photojournalist to use flash photography in his work. 

After looking through numerous pieces of his work the two on the left stand out most to me. The first image uses a long depth of field to capture the entirety of the alley way and highlight the living conditions. The use of overexposure in the background of the image causes the light to erase any detail in the back of the image and connotes hope but juxtaposes the dark and dire living conditions of the slums. Lastly, all the subjects in the photo are facing the camera, which tells me that the scenario is clearly constructed by Riis. 

The next photo is the most powerful of Rii's work to me, capturing three young boys slumped together on top of what looks like a drain cover, with the pipe above them. There is a dark ambiguity to the image as the whether the subjects are sleeping or maybe deceased. I say this because the boy on the far right looks he has naturally fell to that position, with the other two boys possibly embracing one another in mourning. Personally I think they are all just asleep, which raises other questions such as: is this the sort of place they have to sleep? Although, I think, like the previous image, it has been constructed by Riis, just not as deliberately as before.

Lewis Hine was an American sociologist who was pivotal factor in the reformation of child labour laws in the USA. His photography was centered on the evolution of the industrial workforce with many of his photos focussing on child labour as a theme. He began work as a staff photographer for the Russel Sage Foundation where he honed his skill in photographing industrial landscape. A couple of years later he started work for the National Child Labour Committee, and for the next ten years documented child labour in American Industry. 

The two photos on the left were the ones I found to like the most. The first capturing two young looking lads working in a glass works. It portrays the dire working conditions that they had to face, although the emotions of each worker does seem relatively happy. The picture looks as if Hine as asked the boys to turn and then taken the picture at hat precise moment but unlike on the right hand side of the frame, there is no blur to the subjects; leaving me to believe he has asked them to stand like that deliberately. This also tells me the shutter speed on the camera he was using was slow, possibly a 1/3 of a second. 

The next photo looks as if it is done for a fashion shoot. Using a muscular presentable subject in the middle of his job to portray the hard work that these men are doing to uphold America. The picture is framed without breaking any significant edges and composed to appealing to the eye. The man is keeled over into the circular machinery in the background almost connoting that he himself is an integral part.

Dorothea Lange was an highly commended and influential photo journalist who concentrated her works on the great depression and put them at a human level for her audience to sympathise with. 

The first photo entitled 'The Migrant Mother' incapsulates all the emotion that the unemployed in america experienced during the Great Depression. From the worried emotion on the mothers face to the heartbreaking body language of the children. Their clothes are tattered and dirty, for them there is no hope. Lange knew that this image had that immediate effect on its audience and so did the subject Florence Owens Thompson, who reportedly help Lange construct this image to give the desired effect. This image raises the issue most poignantly to me as to whether as constructed image is less truthful that a natural one because without this the rest of America and the world would not understand the true enormity of the issue at hand and how it is effecting their citizens. In 1936 when this image was taken, women and men alike were expected to uphold a degree of decency in what they wore. So when this image depicted Miss Thompson with an open buttoned shirt almost revealing her cleavage, the nation was in uproar that people were being forced to live in this state.

This next image tells a similar story, albeit not quite a powerful one. The whole scene almost portrays a post apocalyptic atmosphere, living out of tents with no shoes underneath the burning sunshine. The boys expression seems disheartened, they are not your average trouble makers, they seemed as grown up as anyone else around them. The 'mother' to left who stands in the sun, juxtaposing the boys in the shade connotes to me that the responsibility falls to her to get them through this. 

Walker Evans was an American photographer best known for the similar work he did to Lange during the Great Depression of the 1930's. His work focussed on the deterioration of the American dream that everyone was promised using iconic imagery of architecture and everyday icons to demonstrate the weight that industry was putting onto small towns in the USA. 

This first picture in vaguely reminiscent of Langes Migrant Mother in the way that the main subject is a forlorn women, dressed inappropriately for the time fighting against the financial struggle of the Great Depression. It highlights an isolated emotion that women in particular are subject to abandonment. The background of the image also subtlety speaks volumes to me. It helps to create a larger picture of wooden shacks and poverty that creates a primitive emotion. Horizontal lines often connote rest or stability in photography, but obviously the situation at the time is quite the opposite so these lines are broken by the presence of the subject, creating a disequilibrium to the image anchoring the emotion of the times of unrest or instability.

The second image uses the planes of field expertly. Framing what seems to be residential houses in the middle ground between a graveyard and industrial backdrop. Strengthening the feeling that capitalism has put itself in between a rock and hard place; either follow through or start again. The image clearly uses a large aperture to capture this landscape moment.

Robert Frank used commonplace icons of the USA such as the flag to show the America through is own opinion. His avoidance of social-political photography paved the way for the future of photojournalism to take on a more personal/reflexive feel that stated their own views on the times away from any censorship. 

Having looked through his critically acclaimed book "The Americans" I chose the image to the left because i feel it perfectly emotes the feel of the whole book, you can almost hear the American national anthem coming form the faceless mans horn. Other images show diners, cowboys, drive-in cinemas, skyscrapers, news-stands, neon lights, James Dean lookalikes, jukeboxes, southern state farms, casinos, hot rods, presidents and roads as straight as a ruler. But all the images are marred with a feeling of false hope and undelivered promises. Rarely does an individual smile and clearly race is documented as an issue with one image framed on the side of bus that has been split between the blacks and the whites. The book is a masterclass in photojournalism in my opinion, one that has inspired to seek out these sort of photos.

Robert Capa was one of the founders of the world renowned Magnum Photography. He spent he most well known years photographing the spanish civil war and WW2 most notably D-Day (the invasion of omaha beach). The photo to the left is from the Spanish civil war, entitled The Falling Soldier and is one of the most famous (or infamous) war photographs of all time. 

It depicts the final moments of a mans life, not alive nor dead. A shocking moment for any human to see, captured on film. He is collapsing backwards with his rifle slipping from his right hand as if he has been shot. Once released skeptics began to form mainly in Spain itself, saying that the image was staged. But again, does the damage that a staged photograph does equal in out in the good it does? A quote from Richard Whelan, who studied the legitimacy of the photograph for 2 decades, says:

"Its is neither a photograph of a man pretending to have been shot, nor an image made during the heat of battle". What I take from that is that the meaning of the image is still true regardless of whether or not it is staged. The emotion and opinion you first feel when you see it is not diluted at all by knowing its staged.

I began looking through the book "Photographs". A book by Cornell Capa bringing together all of his brothers works from his expansive and interesting career. Some of his photos are similar to that of Robert Franks, documenting America presumably taken during Capa's times in Hollywood. But it is his coverage of WW2 and the D-Day invasion which are most powerful. One picture depicts a dead soldier still attached to his parachute that is caught in power-lines over Germany. Another shows four women walking for the remains of what was presumably their homes after a bombing, all their remaining possessions in hand. 

Cornell Capa was the younger brother to the previously mentioned, Robert.  He grew up wanting to study medicine but followed his brother from Hungary to Paris to become a photographer. After the death of his brother he joined Magnum and documented various subjects such as American Politicians. 

I chose the photo to the left because I have always been interested in the life and death of US president JFK. The picture clearly shows the admiration and celebrity that the US public gave to him, an emotion that I believed continued throughout his tenure until his untimely death. It also captures how his casual demeanour trumped that of any stuffy politician of the time with his shirt sleeves rolled up he looks approachable and understanding.