Photojournalism and Beyond

Photojournalism is doing journalism with photographs. A typical example of intermediality, since images can never be separated from words in journalism, it also involves many elements of transmediality, embedding photojournalism in broader medial networks. This chapter does not only discuss definitions of photojournalism, it also tackles more historical and theoretical questions, focusing on three major fields of interest, which are always discussed in relationship with the existing literature on the topic. The chapter further addresses questions raised by the shift to digital media and their impact on issues of realism, truth, and (post-) truth. More specifically, the chapter deals with the following three questions: (1) What is the relationship between words and pictures in photojournalism. Thus it asks whether a photojournalistic picture is only an image, that is a silent and only metaphorically speaking object, or also a sign that functions in combination with other signs, in this case verbal signs, (2) Who is the actual agent of photojournalism, that is, who is doing the “talking,” even when the images are not accompanied, supervised, or marshalled by spoken or written words? (3) Can there be photojournalism outside journalism, for instance in literary texts or in the art circuit – and if so, what is the journalistic values of these practices? In addition, this chapter also discusses questions of intermediality (the copresence and interaction of different media within a single medium) and transmediality (both in the sense of the shift from one medium to another and the distribution of a story in different media).