The invention of photography in the Nineteenth century revolutionized both the method and concept of the image, enabling people to capture not only an exact likeness, but also the subtle nuances of expression, changing emotion and visual essence. The birth of photojournalism came alongside the rise in printed newspaper images, with early explorations mostly centered on capturing scenes of war—the Crimean War and the American Civil War in particular. There is a strict moral and ethical framework that guides the practice of photojournalism, based on the pillars of contemporary journalistic values. Three in particular are important to photojournalism—timeliness, or the context of the image within surrounding events, objectivity, the accurate representation of the captured situation, and narrative, the overarching relationship between the ‘story’ and the image.

Innovators like Roger Fenton, Henri Cartier-Bresson and Dorothea Lange changed the landscape of portrait photography as both an act of documentation and an art form. While the nature and equipment of photojournalism has changed throughout history, the fundamental desire of human beings to capture their trials, struggles and extreme surroundings has remained—carried on by contemporary photographers such as Moises Saman, Sebastião Salgado, An-My Lê and Steve McCurry.