Picture Machine: The Rise of American Newspictures

During the first half of the 20th century, newspaper photographs were the principal way Americans saw what was happening outside their hometown; they would have had a hard time imagining today's image-saturated society. In essays introducing this collection of United Press International photos taken between 1914 and 1965, Hannigan and Johnston outline the origins and rise of photojournalism and its role in creating what could be seen both as a ""collective visual language"" or a ""nation of news picture addicts,"" as one critic states. The photos are sublime, a selection of the best stored in the vast Corbis archives, beginning with a haunting 1917 shot of a board of drawing numbers for the military draft lottery and ending with a view of Martin Luther King, Jr., glancing through a crowd in 1965. In between, one can find images of the Bonus Army Riots of 1932, mobster Abe Reles's funeral and Marilyn Monroe signing an autograph, to name a few. All are accompanied by their original captions. One might wish to know more about the photographers themselves, but almost all the photos are uncredited; as Johnston notes, photographers were ""cowboys"" who earned little money and no recognition for their work because they weren't seen as ""making journalism, just gathering facts."" The images collected here show America's first news photographers at their best, chronicling history for the ages. 300 duotone photos.