Audio slideshows – photo essays for the digital era, Part 1

Browsing through an old World Press Photo book the other day, it struck me that the audio slideshow could be the successor to those fixtures of early photojournalism – ‘photo-essays’. So, in the spirit of Rob Carragher’s earlier post about the history of slideshows, here’s a look at the tangled history of the form. Perhaps their meteoric rise and slow demise can provide some context to the audio-slideshows of today…

Photo-Essays - old editions for sale at 'Slightly out of Focus'

Photo-essays were the key component of once successful magazines like Picture Post, Life and Look. Between the 1920s and 1970s these publications captured the eyes of tens of millions of readers across Europe and the US, with stories about contemporary events / people / issues illustrated by stills by the finest photographers of the era, with accompanying text.

The photo-essay was really the genesis of modern photojournalism. They began in the 1890s as the development and printing costs of photographic images became cheaper (and camera technology advanced), it became possible to publish multiple photographs in newspapers and magazines, linked by some kind of narrative determined by the editor, the photographer or both.

The form had its roots in Germany. Newspapers like the Berliner Illustrierte Zeitung (Berlin Illustrated Newspaper) and the Arbeiter Illustrierte Zeitung (Worker’s Illustrated NewsPaper) heralded the birth of a new medium. But when Hitler came to power in the 1930s, many of the photojournalists and editors working in the country fled to the USA and the UK, becoming involved in the birth of new publications along the same lines.

At the same time, photo magazines were starting to flourish in the IUSA of the 1930s. Soon, the likes of Look, Picture Post and Life were attracting readers in their droves. But into the 1960s and 70s, their popularity began to wane as the public became increasingly hooked on TV.

But the photographers who toiled on these publication continue to inspire modern counterparts, and should provide ample artistic encouragement to the audio-slideshow practitioners working today.

People like Bill Eppridge.

His most iconic image came when covering Bobby Kennedy’s Presidential campaign in 1968 for Life magazine. Present as history unfolded, his image of a dying Bobby Kennedy, felled by an assassin’s bullet, marked another grim milestone in the Kennedy drama.

But Eppridge’s most provocative work from the 60s and 70s is centred on the photo-essay. This series of shots looking at the lives of a young heroin-addicted couple in New York were credited with changing the US Government’s attitude to drug dependency and addiction.

Going further back, Margaret Bourke-White was one of the most famous photographers of the 20^th century. She was responsible for the cover image on the first ever edition of LIFE magazine. She photographed the horror of the Nazi’s Buchenwald concentration camp in 1945, and as India broke free from the British Empire in the 1940s, she documented the life of Mahatma Gandhi.

Other examples of iconic early photo-essays include ‘The construction of the Empire State Building’ by Lewis Hine. A sociologist by training, Hine’s images of of workers labouring at vertigo-inducing heights take in the 1930s have adorned millions of greetings cards and posters today.

There’s a brief historical perspective. In my next post, I’ll be looking at how the modern media is intrepreting the photo-essay..