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How to Create an Engaging Photo Essay (with Examples)

Photo essays tell a story in pictures. They're a great way to improve at photography and story-telling skills at once. Learn how to do create a great one.

Learn | Photography Guides | By Ana Mireles

Photography is a medium used to tell stories – sometimes they are told in one picture, sometimes you need a whole series. Those series can be photo essays.

If you’ve never done a photo essay before, or you’re simply struggling to find your next project, this article will be of help. I’ll be showing you what a photo essay is and how to go about doing one.

You’ll also find plenty of photo essay ideas and some famous photo essay examples from recent times that will serve you as inspiration.

If you’re ready to get started, let’s jump right in!

Table of Contents

What is a Photo Essay?

A photo essay is a series of images that share an overarching theme as well as a visual and technical coherence to tell a story. Some people refer to a photo essay as a photo series or a photo story – this often happens in photography competitions.

Photographic history is full of famous photo essays. Think about The Great Depression by Dorothea Lange, Like Brother Like Sister by Wolfgang Tillmans, Gandhi’s funeral by Henri Cartier Bresson, amongst others.

What are the types of photo essay?

Despite popular belief, the type of photo essay doesn’t depend on the type of photography that you do – in other words, journalism, documentary, fine art, or any other photographic genre is not a type of photo essay.

Instead, there are two main types of photo essays: narrative and thematic .

As you have probably already guessed, the thematic one presents images pulled together by a topic – for example, global warming. The images can be about animals and nature as well as natural disasters devastating cities. They can happen all over the world or in the same location, and they can be captured in different moments in time – there’s a lot of flexibility.

A narrative photo essa y, on the other hand, tells the story of a character (human or not), portraying a place or an event. For example, a narrative photo essay on coffee would document the process from the planting and harvesting – to the roasting and grinding until it reaches your morning cup.

What are some of the key elements of a photo essay?

• Tell a unique story – A unique story doesn’t mean that you have to photograph something that nobody has done before – that would be almost impossible! It means that you should consider what you’re bringing to the table on a particular topic.
• Put yourself into the work – One of the best ways to make a compelling photo essay is by adding your point of view, which can only be done with your life experiences and the way you see the world.
• Add depth to the concept – The best photo essays are the ones that go past the obvious and dig deeper in the story, going behind the scenes, or examining a day in the life of the subject matter – that’s what pulls in the spectator.
• Nail the technique – Even if the concept and the story are the most important part of a photo essay, it won’t have the same success if it’s poorly executed.
• Build a structure – A photo essay is about telling a thought-provoking story – so, think about it in a narrative way. Which images are going to introduce the topic? Which ones represent a climax? How is it going to end – how do you want the viewer to feel after seeing your photo series?
• Make strong choices – If you really want to convey an emotion and a unique point of view, you’re going to need to make some hard decisions. Which light are you using? Which lens? How many images will there be in the series? etc., and most importantly for a great photo essay is the why behind those choices.

9 Tips for Creating a Photo Essay

Credit: Laura James

1. Choose something you know

To make a good photo essay, you don’t need to travel to an exotic location or document a civil war – I mean, it’s great if you can, but you can start close to home.

Depending on the type of photography you do and the topic you’re looking for in your photographic essay, you can photograph a local event or visit an abandoned building outside your town.

It will be much easier for you to find a unique perspective and tell a better story if you’re already familiar with the subject. Also, consider that you might have to return a few times to the same location to get all the photos you need.

2. Follow your passion

Most photo essays take dedication and passion. If you choose a subject that might be easy, but you’re not really into it – the results won’t be as exciting. Taking photos will always be easier and more fun if you’re covering something you’re passionate about.

3. Take your time

A great photo essay is not done in a few hours. You need to put in the time to research it, conceptualizing it, editing, etc. That’s why I previously recommended following your passion because it takes a lot of dedication, and if you’re not passionate about it – it’s difficult to push through.

4. Write a summary or statement

Photo essays are always accompanied by some text. You can do this in the form of an introduction, write captions for each photo or write it as a conclusion. That’s up to you and how you want to present the work.

5. Learn from the masters

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Making a photographic essay takes a lot of practice and knowledge. A great way to become a better photographer and improve your storytelling skills is by studying the work of others. You can go to art shows, review books and magazines and look at the winners in photo contests – most of the time, there’s a category for photo series.

6. Get a wide variety of photos

Think about a story – a literary one. It usually tells you where the story is happening, who is the main character, and it gives you a few details to make you engage with it, right?

The same thing happens with a visual story in a photo essay – you can do some wide-angle shots to establish the scenes and some close-ups to show the details. Make a shot list to ensure you cover all the different angles.

Some of your pictures should guide the viewer in, while others are more climatic and regard the experience they are taking out of your photos.

7. Follow a consistent look

Both in style and aesthetics, all the images in your series need to be coherent. You can achieve this in different ways, from the choice of lighting, the mood, the post-processing, etc.

8. Be self-critical

Once you have all the photos, make sure you edit them with a good dose of self-criticism. Not all the pictures that you took belong in the photo essay. Choose only the best ones and make sure they tell the full story.

9. Ask for constructive feedback

Often, when we’re working on a photo essay project for a long time, everything makes perfect sense in our heads. However, someone outside the project might not be getting the idea. It’s important that you get honest and constructive criticism to improve your photography.

How to Create a Photo Essay in 5 Steps

Credit: Quang Nguyen Vinh

1. Choose your topic

This is the first step that you need to take to decide if your photo essay is going to be narrative or thematic. Then, choose what is it going to be about?

Ideally, it should be something that you’re interested in, that you have something to say about it, and it can connect with other people.

2. Research your topic

To tell a good story about something, you need to be familiar with that something. This is especially true when you want to go deeper and make a compelling photo essay. Day in the life photo essays are a popular choice, since often, these can be performed with friends and family, whom you already should know well.

3. Plan your photoshoot

Depending on what you’re photographing, this step can be very different from one project to the next. For a fine art project, you might need to find a location, props, models, a shot list, etc., while a documentary photo essay is about planning the best time to do the photos, what gear to bring with you, finding a local guide, etc.

Every photo essay will need different planning, so before taking pictures, put in the required time to get things right.

4. Experiment

It’s one thing to plan your photo shoot and having a shot list that you have to get, or else the photo essay won’t be complete. It’s another thing to miss out on some amazing photo opportunities that you couldn’t foresee.

So, be prepared but also stay open-minded and experiment with different settings, different perspectives, etc.

5. Make a final selection

Editing your work can be one of the hardest parts of doing a photo essay. Sometimes we can be overly critical, and others, we get attached to bad photos because we put a lot of effort into them or we had a great time doing them.

Try to be as objective as possible, don’t be afraid to ask for opinions and make various revisions before settling down on a final cut.

7 Photo Essay Topics, Ideas & Examples

Credit: Michelle Leman

• Architectural photo essay

Using architecture as your main subject, there are tons of photo essay ideas that you can do. For some inspiration, you can check out the work of Francisco Marin – who was trained as an architect and then turned to photography to “explore a different way to perceive things”.

You can also lookup Luisa Lambri. Amongst her series, you’ll find many photo essay examples in which architecture is the subject she uses to explore the relationship between photography and space.

• Process and transformation photo essay

This is one of the best photo essay topics for beginners because the story tells itself. Pick something that has a beginning and an end, for example, pregnancy, the metamorphosis of a butterfly, the life-cycle of a plant, etc.

Keep in mind that these topics are linear and give you an easy way into the narrative flow – however, it might be difficult to find an interesting perspective and a unique point of view.

• A day in the life of ‘X’ photo essay

There are tons of interesting photo essay ideas in this category – you can follow around a celebrity, a worker, your child, etc. You don’t even have to do it about a human subject – think about doing a photo essay about a day in the life of a racing horse, for example – find something that’s interesting for you.

• Time passing by photo essay

It can be a natural site or a landmark photo essay – whatever is close to you will work best as you’ll need to come back multiple times to capture time passing by. For example, how this place changes throughout the seasons or maybe even over the years.

A fun option if you live with family is to document a birthday party each year, seeing how the subject changes over time. This can be combined with a transformation essay or sorts, documenting the changes in interpersonal relationships over time.

• Travel photo essay

Do you want to make the jump from tourist snapshots into a travel photo essay? Research the place you’re going to be travelling to. Then, choose a topic.

If you’re having trouble with how to do this, check out any travel magazine – National Geographic, for example. They won’t do a generic article about Texas – they do an article about the beach life on the Texas Gulf Coast and another one about the diverse flavors of Texas.

The more specific you get, the deeper you can go with the story.

• Socio-political issues photo essay

This is one of the most popular photo essay examples – it falls under the category of photojournalism or documental photography. They are usually thematic, although it’s also possible to do a narrative one.

Depending on your topic of interest, you can choose topics that involve nature – for example, document the effects of global warming. Another idea is to photograph protests or make an education photo essay.

It doesn’t have to be a big global issue; you can choose something specific to your community – are there too many stray dogs? Make a photo essay about a local animal shelter. The topics are endless.

• Behind the scenes photo essay

A behind-the-scenes always make for a good photo story – people are curious to know what happens and how everything comes together before a show.

Depending on your own interests, this can be a photo essay about a fashion show, a theatre play, a concert, and so on. You’ll probably need to get some permissions, though, not only to shoot but also to showcase or publish those images.

4 Best Photo Essays in Recent times

Now that you know all the techniques about it, it might be helpful to look at some photo essay examples to see how you can put the concept into practice. Here are some famous photo essays from recent times to give you some inspiration.

Habibi by Antonio Faccilongo

This photo essay wan the World Press Photo Story of the Year in 2021. Faccilongo explores a very big conflict from a very specific and intimate point of view – how the Israeli-Palestinian war affects the families.

He chose to use a square format because it allows him to give order to things and eliminate unnecessary elements in his pictures.

With this long-term photo essay, he wanted to highlight the sense of absence and melancholy women and families feel towards their husbands away at war.

The project then became a book edited by Sarah Leen and the graphics of Ramon Pez.

Picture This: New Orleans by Mary Ellen Mark

The last assignment before her passing, Mary Ellen Mark travelled to New Orleans to register the city after a decade after Hurricane Katrina.

The images of the project “bring to life the rebirth and resilience of the people at the heart of this tale”, – says CNNMoney, commissioner of the work.

Each survivor of the hurricane has a story, and Mary Ellen Mark was there to record it. Some of them have heartbreaking stories about everything they had to leave behind.

Others have a story of hope – like Sam and Ben, two eight-year-olds born from frozen embryos kept in a hospital that lost power supply during the hurricane, yet they managed to survive.

Selfie by Cindy Sherman

Cindy Sherman is an American photographer whose work is mainly done through self-portraits. With them, she explores the concept of identity, gender stereotypes, as well as visual and cultural codes.

One of her latest photo essays was a collaboration with W Magazine entitled Selfie. In it, the author explores the concept of planned candid photos (‘plandid’).

The work was made for Instagram, as the platform is well known for the conflict between the ‘real self’ and the one people present online. Sherman started using Facetune, Perfect365 and YouCam to alter her appearance on selfies – in Photoshop, you can modify everything, but these apps were designed specifically to “make things prettier”- she says, and that’s what she wants to explore in this photo essay.

Tokyo Compression by Michael Wolf

Michael Wolf has an interest in the broad-gauge topic Life in Cities. From there, many photo essays have been derived – amongst them – Tokyo Compression .

He was horrified by the way people in Tokyo are forced to move to the suburbs because of the high prices of the city. Therefore, they are required to make long commutes facing 1,5 hours of train to start their 8+ hour workday followed by another 1,5 hours to get back home.

To portray this way of life, he photographed the people inside the train pressed against the windows looking exhausted, angry or simply absent due to this way of life.

You can visit his website to see other photo essays that revolve around the topic of life in megacities.

Final Words

It’s not easy to make photo essays, so don’t expect to be great at it right from your first project.

Start off small by choosing a specific subject that’s interesting to you –  that will come from an honest place, and it will be a great practice for some bigger projects along the line.

Whether you like to shoot still life or you’re a travel photographer, I hope these photo essay tips and photo essay examples can help you get started and grow in your photography.

Let us know which topics you are working on right now – we’ll love to hear from you!

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Ana Mireles is a Mexican researcher that specializes in photography and communications for the arts and culture sector.

Penelope G. To Ana Mireles Such a well written and helpful article for an writer who wants to inclue photo essay in her memoir. Thank you. I will get to work on this new skill. Penelope G.

Herman Krieger Photo essays in black and white

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Pictures That Tell Stories: Photo Essay Examples

Like any other type of artist, a photographer’s job is to tell a story through their pictures. While some of the most creative among us can invoke emotion or convey a thought with one single photo, the rest of us will rely on a photo essay.

In the following article, we’ll go into detail about what a photo essay is and how to craft one while providing some detailed photo essay examples.

What is a Photo Essay? 

A photo essay is a series of photographs that, when assembled in a particular order, tell a unique and compelling story. While some photographers choose only to use pictures in their presentations, others will incorporate captions, comments, or even full paragraphs of text to provide more exposition for the scene they are unfolding.

A photo essay is a well-established part of photojournalism and have been used for decades to present a variety of information to the reader. Some of the most famous photo essayists include Ansel Adams , W. Eugene Smith, and James Nachtwey. Of course, there are thousands of photo essay examples out there from which you can draw inspiration.

Why Consider Creating a Photo Essay?

As the old saying goes, “a picture is worth 1000 words.” This adage is, for many photographers, reason enough to hold a photo essay in particularly high regard.

For others, a photo essay allow them to take pictures that are already interesting and construct intricate, emotionally-charged tales out of them. For all photographers, it is yet another skill they can master to become better at their craft.

As you might expect, the photo essay have had a long history of being associated with photojournalism. From the Great Depression to Civil Rights Marches and beyond, many compelling stories have been told through a combination of images and text, or photos alone. A photo essay often evokes an intense reaction, whether artistic in nature or designed to prove a socio-political point.

Below, we’ll list some famous photo essay samples to further illustrate the subject.

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Famous Photo Essays

“The Great Depression” by Dorothea Lange – Shot and arranged in the 1930s, this famous photo essay still serves as a stark reminder of The Great Depression and Dust Bowl America . Beautifully photographed, the black and white images offer a bleak insight to one of the country’s most difficult times.

“The Vietnam War” by Philip Jones Griffiths – Many artists consider the Griffiths’ photo essay works to be some of the most important records of the war in Vietnam. His photographs and great photo essays are particularly well-remembered for going against public opinion and showing the suffering of the “other side,” a novel concept when it came to war photography.

Various American Natural Sites by Ansel Adams – Adams bought the beauty of nature home to millions, photographing the American Southwest and places like Yosemite National Park in a way that made the photos seem huge, imposing, and beautiful.

“Everyday” by Noah Kalina – Is a series of photographs arranged into a video. This photo essay features daily photographs of the artist himself, who began taking capturing the images when he was 19 and continued to do so for six years.

“Signed, X” by Kate Ryan – This is a powerful photo essay put together to show the long-term effects of sexual violence and assault. This photo essay is special in that it remains ongoing, with more subjects being added every year.

Common Types of Photo Essays

While a photo essay do not have to conform to any specific format or design, there are two “umbrella terms” under which almost all genres of photo essays tend to fall. A photo essay is thematic and narrative. In the following section, we’ll give some details about the differences between the two types, and then cover some common genres used by many artists.

⬥ Thematic 

A thematic photo essay speak on a specific subject. For instance, numerous photo essays were put together in the 1930s to capture the ruin of The Great Depression. Though some of these presentations followed specific people or families, they mostly told the “story” of the entire event. There is much more freedom with a thematic photo essay, and you can utilize numerous locations and subjects. Text is less common with these types of presentations.

⬥ Narrative 

A narrative photo essay is much more specific than thematic essays, and they tend to tell a much more direct story. For instance, rather than show a number of scenes from a Great Depression Era town, the photographer might show the daily life of a person living in Dust Bowl America. There are few rules about how broad or narrow the scope needs to be, so photographers have endless creative freedom. These types of works frequently utilize text.

Common Photo Essay Genres

Walk a City – This photo essay is when you schedule a time to walk around a city, neighborhood, or natural site with the sole goal of taking photos. Usually thematic in nature, this type of photo essay allows you to capture a specific place, it’s energy, and its moods and then pass them along to others.

The Relationship Photo Essay – The interaction between families and loved ones if often a fascinating topic for a photo essay. This photo essay genre, in particular, gives photographers an excellent opportunity to capture complex emotions like love and abstract concepts like friendship. When paired with introspective text, the results can be quite stunning. 

The Timelapse Transformation Photo Essay – The goal of a transformation photo essay is to capture the way a subject changes over time. Some people take years or even decades putting together a transformation photo essay, with subjects ranging from people to buildings to trees to particular areas of a city.

Going Behind The Scenes Photo Essay – Many people are fascinated by what goes on behind the scenes of big events. Providing the photographer can get access; to an education photo essay can tell a very unique and compelling story to their viewers with this photo essay.

Photo Essay of a Special Event – There are always events and occasions going on that would make an interesting subject for a photo essay. Ideas for this photo essay include concerts, block parties, graduations, marches, and protests. Images from some of the latter were integral to the popularity of great photo essays.

The Daily Life Photo Essay – This type of photo essay often focus on a single subject and attempt to show “a day in the life” of that person or object through the photographs. This type of photo essay can be quite powerful depending on the subject matter and invoke many feelings in the people who view them.

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Photo Essay Ideas and Examples

One of the best ways to gain a better understanding of photo essays is to view some photo essay samples. If you take the time to study these executions in detail, you’ll see just how photo essays can make you a better photographer and offer you a better “voice” with which to speak to your audience.

Some of these photo essay ideas we’ve already touched on briefly, while others will be completely new to you. 

Cover a Protest or March  

Some of the best photo essay examples come from marches, protests, and other events associated with movements or socio-political statements. Such events allow you to take pictures of angry, happy, or otherwise empowered individuals in high-energy settings. The photo essay narrative can also be further enhanced by arriving early or staying long after the protest has ended to catch contrasting images. 

Photograph a Local Event  

Whether you know it or not, countless unique and interesting events are happening in and around your town this year. Such events provide photographers new opportunities to put together a compelling photo essay. From ethnic festivals to historical events to food and beverage celebrations, there are many different ways to capture and celebrate local life.

Visit an Abandoned Site or Building  

Old homes and historical sites are rich with detail and can sometimes appear dilapidated, overgrown by weeds, or broken down by time. These qualities make them a dynamic and exciting subject. Many great photo essay works of abandoned homes use a mix of far-away shots, close-ups, weird angles, and unique lighting. Such techniques help set a mood that the audience can feel through the photographic essay.

Chronicle a Pregnancy

Few photo essay topics could be more personal than telling the story of a pregnancy. Though this photo essay example can require some preparation and will take a lot of time, the results of a photographic essay like this are usually extremely emotionally-charged and touching. In some cases, photographers will continue the photo essay project as the child grows as well.

Photograph Unique Lifestyles  

People all over the world are embracing society’s changes in different ways. People live in vans or in “tiny houses,” living in the woods miles away from everyone else, and others are growing food on self-sustaining farms. Some of the best photo essay works have been born out of these new, inspiring movements.

Photograph Animals or Pets  

If you have a favorite animal (or one that you know very little about), you might want to arrange a way to see it up close and tell its story through images. You can take photos like this in a zoo or the animal’s natural habitat, depending on the type of animal you choose. Pets are another great topic for a photo essay and are among the most popular subjects for many photographers.

Show Body Positive Themes  

So much of modern photography is about showing the best looking, prettiest, or sexiest people at all times. Choosing a photo essay theme like body positivity, however, allows you to film a wide range of interesting-looking people from all walks of life.

Such a photo essay theme doesn’t just apply to women, as beauty can be found everywhere. As a photo essay photographer, it’s your job to find it!

Bring Social Issues to Life  

Some of the most impactful social photo essay examples are those where the photographer focuses on social issues. From discrimination to domestic violence to the injustices of the prison system, there are many ways that a creative photographer can highlight what’s wrong with the world. This type of photo essay can be incredibly powerful when paired with compelling subjects and some basic text.

Photograph Style and Fashion

If you live in or know of a particularly stylish locale or area, you can put together an excellent thematic photo essay by capturing impromptu shots of well-dressed people as they pass by. As with culture, style is easily identifiable and is as unifying as it is divisive. Great photo essay examples include people who’ve covered fashion sub-genres from all over the world, like urban hip hop or Japanese Visual Kei. 

Photograph Native Cultures and Traditions  

If you’ve ever opened up a copy of National Geographic, you’ve probably seen photo essay photos that fit this category. To many, the traditions, dress, religious ceremonies, and celebrations of native peoples and foreign cultures can be utterly captivating. For travel photographers, this photo essay is considered one of the best ways to tell a story with or without text.

Capture Seasonal Or Time Changes In A Landmark Photo Essay

Time-lapse photography is very compelling to most viewers. What they do in a few hours, however, others are doing over months, years, and even decades. If you know of an exciting landscape or scene, you can try to capture the same image in Winter, Spring, Summer, and Fall, and put that all together into one landmark photo essay.

Alternatively, you can photograph something being lost or ravaged by time or weather. The subject of your landmark photo essay can be as simple as the wall of an old building or as complex as an old house in the woods being taken over by nature. As always, there are countless transformation-based landmark photo essay works from which you can draw inspiration.

Photograph Humanitarian Efforts or Charity  

Humanitarian efforts by groups like Habitat for Humanity, the Red Cross, and Doctors Without Borders can invoke a powerful response through even the simplest of photos. While it can be hard to put yourself in a position to get the images, there are countless photo essay examples to serve as inspiration for your photo essay project.

How to Create a Photo Essay

There is no singular way to create a photo essay. As it is, ultimately, and artistic expression of the photographer, there is no right, wrong, good, or bad. However, like all stories, some tell them well and those who do not. Luckily, as with all things, practice does make perfect. Below, we’ve listed some basic steps outlining how to create a photo essay

Steps To Create A Photo Essay

Choose Your Topic – While some photo essayists will be able to “happen upon” a photo story and turn it into something compelling, most will want to choose their photo essay topics ahead of time. While the genres listed above should provide a great starting place, it’s essential to understand that photo essay topics can cover any event or occasion and any span of time

Do Some Research – The next step to creating a photo essay is to do some basic research. Examples could include learning the history of the area you’re shooting or the background of the person you photograph. If you’re photographing a new event, consider learning the story behind it. Doing so will give you ideas on what to look for when you’re shooting.  

Make a Storyboard – Storyboards are incredibly useful tools when you’re still in the process of deciding what photo story you want to tell. By laying out your ideas shot by shot, or even doing rough illustrations of what you’re trying to capture, you can prepare your photo story before you head out to take your photos.

This process is especially important if you have little to no control over your chosen subject. People who are participating in a march or protest, for instance, aren’t going to wait for you to get in position before offering up the perfect shot. You need to know what you’re looking for and be prepared to get it.

Get the Right Images – If you have a shot list or storyboard, you’ll be well-prepared to take on your photo essay. Make sure you give yourself enough time (where applicable) and take plenty of photos, so you have a lot from which to choose. It would also be a good idea to explore the area, show up early, and stay late. You never know when an idea might strike you.

Assemble Your Story – Once you develop or organize your photos on your computer, you need to choose the pictures that tell the most compelling photo story or stories. You might also find some great images that don’t fit your photo story These can still find a place in your portfolio, however, or perhaps a completely different photo essay you create later.

Depending on the type of photographer you are, you might choose to crop or digitally edit some of your photos to enhance the emotions they invoke. Doing so is completely at your discretion, but worth considering if you feel you can improve upon the naked image.

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Best Photo Essays Tips And Tricks

Before you approach the art of photo essaying for the first time, you might want to consider with these photo essay examples some techniques, tips, and tricks that can make your session more fun and your final results more interesting. Below, we’ve compiled a list of some of the best advice we could find on the subject of photo essays. 

⬥ Experiment All You Want 

You can, and should, plan your topic and your theme with as much attention to detail as possible. That said, some of the best photo essay examples come to us from photographers that got caught up in the moment and decided to experiment in different ways. Ideas for experimentation include the following: 

Angles – Citizen Kane is still revered today for the unique, dramatic angles used in the film. Though that was a motion picture and not photography, the same basic principles still apply. Don’t be afraid to photograph some different angles to see how they bring your subject to life in different ways.

Color – Some images have more gravitas in black in white or sepia tone. You can say the same for images that use color in an engaging, dynamic way. You always have room to experiment with color, both before and after the shoot.

Contrast – Dark and light, happy and sad, rich and poor – contrast is an instantly recognizable form of tension that you can easily include in your photo essay. In some cases, you can plan for dramatic contrasts. In other cases, you simply need to keep your eyes open.

Exposure Settings – You can play with light in terms of exposure as well, setting a number of different moods in the resulting photos. Some photographers even do random double exposures to create a photo essay that’s original.

Filters – There are endless post-production options available to photographers, particularly if they use digital cameras. Using different programs and apps, you can completely alter the look and feel of your image, changing it from warm to cool or altering dozens of different settings.

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If you’re using traditional film instead of a digital camera, you’re going to want to stock up. Getting the right shots for a photo essay usually involves taking hundreds of images that will end up in the rubbish bin. Taking extra pictures you won’t use is just the nature of the photography process. Luckily, there’s nothing better than coming home to realize that you managed to capture that one, perfect photograph. 

⬥ Set the Scene 

You’re not just telling a story to your audience – you’re writing it as well. If the scene you want to capture doesn’t have the look you want, don’t be afraid to move things around until it does. While this doesn’t often apply to photographing events that you have no control over, you shouldn’t be afraid to take a second to make an OK shot a great shot. 

⬥ Capture Now, Edit Later 

Editing, cropping, and digital effects can add a lot of drama and artistic flair to your photos. That said, you shouldn’t waste time on a shoot, thinking about how you can edit it later. Instead, make sure you’re capturing everything that you want and not missing out on any unique pictures. If you need to make changes later, you’ll have plenty of time! 

⬥ Make It Fun 

As photographers, we know that taking pictures is part art, part skill, and part performance. If you want to take the best photo essays, you need to loosen up and have fun. Again, you’ll want to plan for your topic as best as you can, but don’t be afraid to lose yourself in the experience. Once you let yourself relax, both the ideas and the opportunities will manifest.

⬥ It’s All in The Details 

When someone puts out a photographic essay for an audience, that work usually gets analyzed with great attention to detail. You need to apply this same level of scrutiny to the shots you choose to include in your photo essay. If something is out of place or (in the case of historical work) out of time, you can bet the audience will notice.

⬥ Consider Adding Text

While it isn’t necessary, a photographic essay can be more powerful by the addition of text. This is especially true of images with an interesting background story that can’t be conveyed through the image alone. If you don’t feel up to the task of writing content, consider partnering with another artist and allowing them tor bring your work to life.

Final Thoughts 

The world is waiting to tell us story after story. Through the best photo essays, we can capture the elements of those stories and create a photo essay that can invoke a variety of emotions in our audience.

No matter the type of cameras we choose, the techniques we embrace, or the topics we select, what really matters is that the photos say something about the people, objects, and events that make our world wonderful.

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Categories: archives , photo essay

Photojournalism

Summary of Photojournalism

Though one might be forgiven for sometimes confusing it with Documentary and Street Photography , Photojournalism possesses a vitality and a force all of its own. At its most rudimentary, Photojournalism is the practice of conveying the urgency of current news stories through pictures. It is true that a photojournalistic image can sometimes be left to speak for itself, but more usually it develops a narrative in conjunction with a written text; a comingling, in other words, of photography and journalism. Photojournalism is the lifeblood of the daily press, but it is associated predominantly with the rise of dedicated photo magazines and their preference for the so-called "photo-essay". Photojournalism deals with important, or newsworthy, subject matter, and its two overarching themes are world events and social injustice. Given, moreover, that photojournalists are usually committed to exposing wrongs, photojournalism is predicated on an unwritten code of practice that states that - if it is to adhere to the very highest standards of journalistic objectivity - the image must not be staged or manipulated. These rules are easier to apply to live action photography, however, and in actual practice the codes of practice can be bent where the urgency of the situation has demanded it. And while photojournalistic images tend to be very much "of the moment," Photojournalism has become instrumental in how we have come to view the last 170 years of world history.

Key Ideas & Accomplishments

• At basis, Photojournalism performs an important civic duty. Based on the premise that one always trusts the evidence of one's own eyes, it is Photojournalism's job to inform the public by showing the world "how it is in reality." The image, therefore, confirms the content of any accompanying written text (or vice-versa indeed).
• It is true that some exceptional photojournalists have achieved the status of "artists" - Henri Cartier-Bresson , Dorothea Lange and Arthur Rothstein for instance - but typically Photojournalism does not sit comfortably within the sphere of modern art photography . Photojournalists are more likely to earn the respect of their peers and the public as intrepid buccaneers willing to put their own safety at risk in order to capture the truest images.
• Since they can both aim at exposing social and/or humanitarian injustices, Photojournalism can certainly qualify as Documentary Photography . But unlike documentary, photojournalism tends to be investigative and unrehearsed. Photojournalism relies very much on an opportunistic snapshot principle for its effect whereas Documentary Photography is more typically the result of planning and considered composition.
• The photojournalist seeks to capture a moment - or a split second (the "decisive moment" as Henri Cartier-Bresson called it) - that would have, without their daring and endeavour, gone unnoticed. There is then sometimes a guerrilla element to photojournalism, especially so where the photojournalist is operating incognito or within a war zone.

Key Artists

Overview of Photojournalism

The role of the photojournalist can be incredibly dangerous. More than 1,000 photojournalists have died internationally since 1992 as they risk attack, retribution and kidnap to present the world with powerful images from the front line of conflict and danger.

Important Photographs and Artists of Photojournalism

Valley of the Shadow of Death

Artist: Robert Fenton

Fenton's image, which depicts a ravine in a desolate landscape beneath a bleak empty sky, is populated only with cannonballs. Strewn along the road on the right, and filling the ditch between the road and two paths on the left, the cannonballs are meant to represent British casualties of the Crimean war. The perspective of the photograph, looking up toward the sloping hills and around the incline of the road, captures something of the sense of hopelessness at being trapped in a valley under enemy fire from above. As Fenton described it: "the sight passed all imagination: round shot and shell lay like a stream at the bottom of the hollow all the way down, you could not walk without treading upon them." This barren war landscape would have resonated with the British national consciousness. Most had heard the story of "The Charge of the Light Brigade," an elite cavalry unit that sustained heavy casualties when ordered to charge through the Valley of the Shadow of Death toward fortified Russian artillery on October 25, 1854. The event was commemorated in a poem of the same title by Alfred Lord Tennyson, the poet laureate. The location in this photograph is of a similar but different ravine, and the image came to represent the heroism and tragedy of war. It transpired, however, that Fenton photographed the ravine on two separate occasions. Subsequently, controversy developed as to whether some of the cannonballs were placed to make a better second image. Thus, while the image remains of great historical significance, it is also attended by the issue of authenticity which underscores all judgements on the value of Photojournalism.

Salted paper print - J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles California

A Harvest of Death, Gettysburg, Pennsylvania, July 4, 1863

Artist: Timothy H. O'Sullivan

This image, possibly the best known of Brady's Civil War photographs, depicts dead soldiers scattered on the battlefield after the Battle of Gettysburg, which took place between July 1-3, 1863. The photograph was included in Alexander Gardner's, Photographic Sketch Book of the War (1866), with text that read: "it was, indeed, a 'harvest of death' that was presented; hundreds and thousands of torn Union and rebel soldiers - although many of the former were already interred - strewed the now quiet fighting ground." The image was preceded by Gardner's hope that "Such a picture conveys a useful moral: It shows the blank horror and reality of war, in opposition to its pageantry. Here are the dreadful details! Let them aid in preventing such another calamity." During the Civil War, though photographs were taken of the dead, sometimes even in the stages of decomposition, newspapers and journals refused to publish them. It was only in books like Gardner's that the images were available to the public. Viewers, used to heroic depictions of war presented in paintings, were shocked by images like this one. The collected works showed the power of photography to depict history in the making. As The New York Times said of the book, "The faithful camera [...] has written the true history of the war."

Albumen silver print - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York New York

The Crawlers

Artist: John Thomson

This picture depicts a destitute middle-aged woman holding a sleeping child on her lap, as she rests on a doorstep. The Crawlers was intended to communicate the dire situation of London's poor and to advocate a call for social change. The image was one of 36 published in Street Life in London (1877) with the writer Adolphe Smith Headingly's text relating the story of how the woman, through circumstances beyond her control, "descended penniless into the street." Using photographs to uphold the arguments presented by the text, the book helped pioneer the concept of the photo-essay. Thomson and Smith were both social reformers and hoped that their work would convince their readers that homelessness was "often, the result of unfortunate circumstances and accident." The image conveys the woman's exhaustion and also her solicitude for the child. In their introduction to the book, the co-authors championed "the precision of photography" and its ability to "present true types of the London poor and [to] shield us [the authors] from accusations of either underrating or exaggerating individual peculiarities of appearance."

Woodbury type - Victoria and Albert Museum, London England

Farmer and Sons Walking in the Face of a Dust Storm, Cimarron County, Oklahoma, April 1936

Artist: Arthur Rothstein

This iconic image depicts Arthur Cobel, a farmer and his two sons walking toward their simple shack in a dust storm on the Southern Plains of Oklahoma. The dust is so dense that the horizon is a blur, and the accumulated sand has built up in drifts so that the fence posts are now shorter than the young boy who runs along behind (with his hands protecting his face from the dust). Rothstein said of this photograph, "It was a picture that had a very simple kind of composition, but [...] it showed an individual in relation to his environment." Arthur Rothstein was the first photographer appointed by the Farm Security Administration (FSA), a project that was meant to build support for the social reforms of the Roosevelt Administration. Here he documents the devastating effects of the Dust Bowl of the 1930s, a phenomenon caused by a combination of a severe drought and over farming, that lasted eight years and devastated livestock and crops. Rothstein's career extended over some five decades. Working for Look magazine first as a photographer, and subsequently as its director of photography, in later years he became a respected teacher who schooled the renowned filmmaker Stanley Kubrick.

Gelatin silver print - Amon Carter Museum, Fort Worth, Texas

The Falling Soldier

Artist: Frank Capa

As its original title confirms, Capa's most iconic image captures the "moment of death." The falling soldier is a loyalist militiaman fighting the Spanish Civil War and he has been struck in the forehead by a bullet; he falls backwards as his own rifle slips from his hand. Prior to Capa's photograph, war photography had often depicted stationary scenes of armaments, encampments, or the aftermath of battles. Shockingly brutal in its depiction of the realities of war, The Falling Soldier (originally titled: Loyalist Militiaman at the Moment of Death, Cerro Muriano, September 5, 1936 ) earned Capa the accolade "the greatest war photographer in the world" and duly set a new standard for authentic war photography. As Photojournalism emphasizes the accurate depiction of newsworthy events, questions of authenticity (more so than artistic merit) are of crucial importance. Thus, a hint of controversy developed around the identity of the soldier, the precise location of the photograph, and the circumstances under which it was taken. It wasn't until the 1990s that the man's identity was confirmed by his surviving brother, and military accounts recording the event of the man's death confirmed the picture's authenticity. However, other controversies persist around the potentially disconcerting effects of the photojournalistic image itself and how it impacts on the lives of the people it directly affects. These were not issues that concerned Cartier-Bresson who viewed Capa, with whom he later cofounded the Magnum agency in 1947, as a mentor and a voice of conscience.

Gelatin silver print - The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York New York

The Louisville Flood

Artist: Margaret Bourke-White

Bourke-White began her career in the early 1930s, and in 1937 when the Ohio River flooded Louisville Kentucky, she was sent to the area as a staff photographer for LIFE magazine. Documenting what was one of the largest natural disasters in the history of the United States, Bourke-White's images offered a commentary on racial and economic inequity. This photograph depicts African-Americans queuing outside a flood relief agency in front of a billboard that depicts a cheerful white middle-class family in their car. The billboard's heading "World's Highest Standard of Living," and the slogan "There's no way like the American Way," can be treated with ironic scepticism given the reality that is playing out in front of the billboard.

Gelatin silver print - Whitney Museum of American Art, New York New York

FRANCE. Normandy. June 6th, 1944. US troops assault Omaha Beach during the D-Day landings (first assault)

Artist: Robert Capa

This photograph captures a single instance of the D-Day invasion as Allied forces came ashore during the Normandy beach landing. The image focuses on a single soldier, who lies prone in the water as he looks towards shore, his gun extended in front of him. In the background, troop carriers can be seen, and objects - perhaps dead soldiers - float in the water. The blurriness of the photo, due to the photographer's position in the water, and the terror of being under artillery fire himself, conveys the utter chaos of the scene. Capa took over a hundred photos of the D-Day invasion, but a processing accident at LIFE magazine's London darkroom destroyed all but eleven of them. Dubbed the Magnificent Eleven , the images inspired Steven Spielberg's 1998 movie Saving Private Ryan . The film represented the Omaha Beach assault through a 27 minute opening sequence that many critics consider to be the most realistic depiction of battle ever produced. Capa was the foremost war photographer of his generation, and perhaps, of the entire 20 th century. His work exemplified the exacting standards expected of photojournalists and this was acknowledged by the Overseas Press Club of America who awarded the annual Robert Capa Gold Medal for overseas coverage "requiring courage and enterprise" in his honor from 1955. Capa himself was killed in 1954 while photographing the Indochine War in Vietnam.

Film negative - International Center of Photography/Magnum Photos

Shanghai 1948

Artist: Henri Cartier-Bresson

Cartier-Bresson travelled to China in 1948 on an assignment with LIFE magazine. He was tasked with photographing the transition from the Kuomintang government to the People's Republic, led by the Communist Chairman Mao. In this claustrophobic and turbulent scene a group of Chinese people tries to form a line outside of a bank (just outside of the picture's frame on the right). Some huddle or cling for physical stability to the people around them while others jostle forward. Others are seen climbing the building behind the crowd mass. Tightly framed, the image conveys a sense of panic and desperation. The cause of the crush was a currency crash that rendered paper money worthless and the ruling Kuomintang government promised to give forty grams of gold to each effected citizen. Cartier-Bresson called it "The Gold Rush" and described how "Outside the banks on the Bund vast queues have formed, spilling over into the neighboring streets and blocking the traffic. About ten people must have died in the crush [...] Some people waited more than 24 hours to try and exchange their banknotes."

A Disturbed Child in a Warsaw Orphanage

Artist: David Seymour

Already well known for his photographs of the Spanish Civil War (where he worked alongside Capa) David "Chim" Seymour was a Polish Jew and the first official UNICEF photographer to document the plight of children who had become refugees or orphans after World War II. This image depicts Terezka, a traumatized girl of seven or eight, who, having grown up in a concentration camp, was moved to a home for mentally disturbed children in Warsaw. Terezka had been asked to draw a picture of "home" and produced a frenzied scribble that was matched by her agitated expression. "Chim's" UNICEF photographs were published in LIFE magazine in 1948 with the caption for this image reading: "Children's wounds are not all outward. Those made in the mind by years of sorrow will take years to heal." "Chim's" friend, and cofounder of Magnum, Henri Cartier-Bresson suggested that "Chim" had "picked up his camera the way a doctor takes his stethoscope out of his bag, applying his diagnosis to the condition of the heart." Cartier-Bresson's assessment might have had special resonance for this image given that "Chim" had learned the details of his own parents' deaths in a Warsaw ghetto while on the UNICEF assignment. This photograph, selected by Edward Steichen for his world famous exhibition The Family of Man in 1955, became one of his best known. "Chim" was killed during a photo assignment while he was covering the armistice of the 1956 Suez War.

Gelatin silver print - The National Gallery of Art, Washington DC

Aid from the Padre, June 4, 1962

Artist: Hector Rondón Lovera

This photograph depicts Navy chaplain Luis Padilla, himself under threat of sniper fire, holding a wounded man in the street during a Venezuelan revolt. The padre had gone out into the streets to give last rites to the dying man, when the photographer, also under fire, took this shot. The background, depicting a closed up carnicería - which in Spanish translates to "butcher's shop" or "slaughter and carnage" - brings added poignance to the image. Lovera was working for La Republica , the Venezuelan newspaper, when he took this photograph - one of a series in the city of Puerto Cabello, home of Venezuela's largest naval base. Through the selfless humanitarianism of the solitary padre, the image represents both the best and worst of the human condition and the photograph was named the World Press Photo of the Year in 1962 and won the Pulitzer Prize for Photography a year later. The photograph also influenced Norman Rockwell's Murder in Mississippi (1964).

Film negative - World Press Photo Archive

Czechoslovakia, August 1968

Artist: Josef Koudelka

To take this image, Koudelka asked an unnamed passer-by to position himself in order to show the exact moment the Soviets invaded Prague in 1968. Koudelka, a theatre photographer, had never photographed news events before, but in the week following the invasion he took over 5000 photographs of the widespread revolt of anti-Soviet activists. He was shot at and pursued by soldiers but managed to arrange for his photographs to be smuggled out to the country and sent to Magnum. The images then appeared in the British Sunday Times and LIFE magazine in America. The published photographs were attributed to someone known only as PP (for "Prague Photographer") in order to avoid personal reprisals. Ultimately, Koudelka left his native country for a life of exile. He became one of the most noted photojournalist of his generation, and published his first book Gypsies in 1975 and Exiles in 1988, both of which reflect on the themes of homelessness, exile, and the life of the outsider. This work, however, exemplified the idea of photojournalist as personal witness and the risks that that might entail.

Film negative - Magnum Photos

Mourning a brother killed by a Taliban rocket, Afghanistan

Artist: James Natchwey

Natchwey is one of the best-known contemporary photojournalists and war photographers. He has been awarded the Robert Capa Gold Medal five times, and the World Press Photo Award twice. He has covered armed conflicts since 1981 when he was assigned to Northern Ireland, and has been a contracted photographer with Time since 1984. This image originated in his coverage of the war of Afghanistan in the 1990s and depicts a local woman in mourning. She is shrouded in a burka reaching out to touch the tombstone of her brother's grave in a cemetery in Afghanistan. The horizon is cut off in order to emphasize a desolate landscape littered haphazardly with similar headstones. In his work, Natchwey emphasizes the role of photojournalist as objective witness: "There's a vital story to be told" he said and he has used his camera to tell the story of war, famine, social unrest, the AIDS epidemic in Africa, and the worldwide epidemic of drug resistant tuberculosis. Committed in principle to Capa's famous maxim "If your pictures are not good enough, you are not close enough," Natchwey is noted among photojournalists for the intimacy of his images. In 2001 a documentary film about him, War Photographer , was nominated for an Academy Award as best documentary.

Silver gelatin print - Museum of Art and Photography, Bangalore India

America 1968 Baltimore Riots

Artist: Devin Allen

This photograph shows a young black man running down the middle of the street, while being pursued by dozens of policemen. Having grown up in West Baltimore, Allen was 26 years old when he took this and other images documenting the riots following the death of Freddie Gray while in police custody. The image captures something of the intensity of the hostilities while working also as a commentary on contemporary race relations. Inspired by Gordon Parks and Andy Warhol, Allen had previously explored street photography and portraiture. He posted his images on Instagram where they were shared widely on Twitter and other social media platforms. Finally they featured on CNN and the BBC news channels. Indeed, this image became Time 's cover image (on April 25, 2015) and he was only the third amateur photograph to be featured on its cover. The cultural critic John Logan noted that in the age of social media the "documentary images of this civil rights era [had become transformed through] first-person dispatches," though whether that is necessarily a positive step forward for Photojournalism is open to question.

Film negative - National Museum of African American History & Culture, Washington DC

Beginnings of Photojournalism

The first cameras were seen as little more than machines for documenting reality. Early pioneers such as Louis Daguerre and Henry Fox-Talbot used their cameras to either produce studio portraits or to photograph public spaces and landmarks and the realization that photography could be used to inform the public emerged soon thereafter. The first true Photojournalism, however, is usually attributed to Carol Szathmari and Roger Fenton who used their cameras to document the Crimean War (1853-56). Szathmari, a Romanian painter, became a war photographer when, on his own initiative, he outfitted a wagon with a dark room and headed first to the banks of the Danube River, and onward then, to other Crimean battlefields. He exhibited approximately 200 war photographs at the 1855 Paris World Exhibition to great acclaim and was subsequently appointed Court Painter and Photographer for Romania in 1863.

In 1854, meanwhile, the British photographer, Roger Fenton, urged by Prince Albert and the British Secretary of War, headed for Crimea. The British government hoped that photographic images might boost the people's moral support for the unpopular war effort. Fenton's desolate landscape, The Valley of the Shadow of Death , became his most famous photograph. The location, near Sevastopol, was known as "The Valley of Death" after the elite British Light Brigade sustained heavy casualties when ordered to charge a heavily fortified Russian position that overlooked the valley. Fenton's image resonated with the British public as did his panoramic images. For the latter, Fenton had set up a camera in a chosen location and then rotated it for a series of shots which rendered - in pictures - the experience being on the front lines. Fenton's photographs appeared in the Illustrated London News in 1855 and were also put on public display widely throughout England. Fenton also presented his work to Queen Victoria, the French Emperor Napoleon III, and other royal dignitaries who quickly realized the important role Photojournalism could play in forming a national consciousness.

The American Civil War and Matthew Brady

Matthew Brady was an acclaimed New York portrait photographer and one of the first to launch his own studio in 1845. The outbreak of the American Civil War in 1861 created a new demand amongst his clients for photographs of conscripted relatives leading Brady to develop an interest in war photography.

It was President Abraham Lincoln no less who granted Brady permission to travel to battle scenes (with the caveat that Brady cover his own expenses). Brady assembled a team of 24 photographers whose photographs of the First Battle of Bull Run became especially well known, with several being published in Harper's Weekly . Though they offended the tastes of the public at large, The New York Times commented that "The faithful camera...has written the true history of the war. It is not merely what these representations are to us, but what they will be to those who come after us."

Social Documentary

At the start of the 1860s, a major trend in Photojournalism emerged with the camera being employed as a tool to highlight the plight of the poor and needy in industrial societies. Having travelled with his camera throughout Southeast Asia and China (the idea of colonial photography, and the colonial "postcard" in particular, becoming a field of photography in its own right), the Englishman John Thomson returned home in 1872 when he used his camera to expose social inequalities in Victorian England. His famous collection, Street Life in London , comprised of 37 photographs, was supported by essays by Adolph Smith Headingly and is often cited as among the first to match written essays with photographic images.

In the United States meanwhile the photographer Jacob Riis (know as an innovator in flash photography) documented the grave living conditions in the tenements of New York City. A Danish émigré, Riis found work as a journalist, a newspaper editor, and a police reporter and was a strong advocate of social reform. Eighteen of his photographs appeared in a photo essay "How the Other Half Lives" in Scribner Magazine' s 1889 Christmas edition and included images like Bandit's Roost (1888), which depicts a number of shadowy men standing along a narrow street which was located in the most crime-ridden area of New York City.

The “Golden Age” of Photojournalism

The work of Fenton, Brady, Thompson, Riis and the like helped establish the conventions of Photojournalism. And though it is problematic to speak of a "golden age" for a genre that tends to focus on human suffering, the so-called "golden age" of Photojournalism began, nevertheless, around 1930. Lasting a period of roughly 30 years, it has come to be considered exceptional because it gave rise to several noted photographers who between them helped expand the genre by exploiting innovations in camera technology. The "golden age" also coincided with the rise of popular photographic magazines like LIFE, Look , Regards , and Paris Match all of which carried the work of distinguished photojournalists.

The development of portable cameras with faster exposure times, including the Filmo 70 16mm movie camera and the 35mm Leica, gave photographers more mobility and a better chance of capturing live action. Robert Capa became the pre-eminent war photographer of his generation and remains best known internationally for The Falling Soldier (1936); a photograph that caught the instant when a Republic soldier in the Spanish Civil War was felled by an enemy bullet. Henri Cartier-Bresson , meanwhile, earned the title of "father of Photojournalism" thanks to his uncanny ability to freeze noteworthy events in what became known as his "decisive moment". The Frenchman covered occasions ranging from the coronations of King George VI and Queen Elizabeth II, to the Occupation and Liberation of France during and after World War II.

Social Documentary in the 1930s

In the 1930s, Social Documentary was an expansive artistic movement that welcomed photojournalists into its ranks. Between 1935 and 1944 Photojournalism in the US was exemplified by projects undertaken under the auspices of the Farm Security Administration (FSA). The purpose of the FSA project was to highlight rural (rather than urban) poverty and it brought international recognition to the likes of Dorothea Lange , Walker Evans , Arthur Rothstein , and Gordon Parks . Major national disasters like the Dust Bowl drought and the Great Depression, events driven by weather patterns and economic situations respectively, were shown through the personal impact they had had on individuals. The success of the FSA project was such that magazines such as LIFE employed staff photographers such as Margaret Bourke-White to cover events of national significance (such as the flooding of Louisville, Kentucky in 1935).

World War II

Following the rise of Nazism, photojournalists turned primarily towards documenting the turmoil of WWII. Bourke-White was the only Western photographer to witness the German attack on Moscow - known as the "Battle of Moscow" - in 1941 and she was the first woman to accompany US Air Corps crews on bombing missions in 1942. She also travelled with General Patton through Germany as his armies liberated a number of concentration camps. Between 1941- 46, Robert Capa (the Hungarian had relocated to New York from Paris where he had been a colleague of Cartier-Bresson) worked as a freelance photographer and war correspondent for LIFE and Collier's magazine. He was the only official American photographer to accompany the Allied troops on the D-Day landings and he also covered Allied victories in North Africa, and the Allied seizure of Leipzig, Nuremberg, and Berlin.

The Magnum Photographic Agency

In 1947, Capa, Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, William Vandivert and David "Chim" Seymour formed a photographic cooperative that gave its members the freedom to photograph (and to own the copyright of) what they saw rather than be beholden to the demands of magazine editors. Magnum's mission statement proclaimed to "feel the pulse of the times," and it launched a number of long-running photographic projects including People Live Everywhere , Youth of the World , Women of the World and The Child Generation . Photographic coverage of geographical areas was split meanwhile among the core group: Roger covered Africa and the Middle East; "Chim" covered Europe; Cartier-Bresson covered China and India while America became Vandivert's territory. Capa was the exception, more a free-roaming figure was who would work worldwide. Each of the photographers became associated with their coverage of subsequent events, as was the case for instance with Cartier-Bresson who covered the assassination and funeral of Mahatma Gandhi in 1949.

Technology and Innovation

Given the need for long exposure times, and the need to place their camera on a tripod, the early war photographs by the likes of Fenton and Brady were of a somewhat static quality. Their images were largely restricted to pictures of military camps, generals in their tents, or decimated battlefields. The photographs of Thomson and Riis also lacked any real sense of mobility but their capacity to shoot in under lit urban environments was made possible by the development of a flash mechanism. The pocket Kodak was available from the late nineteenth century but lacked professional quality. That was remedied between the mid-1920s and mid-1930s when the Leica 35mm compact and the Filmo 70 16mm movie cameras brought with them a new sense of liberation. War photojournalists like Gerda Taro and Robert Capa could film battle scenes as they happened, and photographic coverage of conflict, whether war or civil unrest, began to dominate the news.

Technology has continued to change Photojournalism with the development of the smart phone and the ability to upload images almost instantaneously to the web. The New York Times and Washington Post both ran headline images taken by ordinary citizens on their camera phones during the 2005 London bombing. In 2013 the Chicago Tribune laid off their photojournalistic staff, including John H. White whose work had previously won a Pulitzer prize, and began using freelance photographers who were trained to use an iPhone. Due to the technology of the camera phone, a new kind of everyman-photojournalist has resulted.

Concepts and Trends

The “photo-essay”.

With the rise of many photo magazines, and the overall turn of the medium to a greater reliance on imagery, the so-called "photo-essay" became a popular method for covering news and human interest stories. On the one hand, photo-essays focused on events of national significance; on the other, photo-essays reflected a humanist perspective (and sometimes the two would overlap). Most of the noted photojournalists working in the mid-to-late-twentieth century - including W. Eugene Smith, Cartier-Bresson, Dorothea Lange, and more recently, Josef Koudelka , Sebastião Salgado, and Gabriela Iturbide - have worked (or continue to work) at one time or another in the photo-essay format. When LIFE magazine suspended publication in 1972, various critics felt that the photo-essay was dead, but, in fact, it has remained a viable form, though more so in book publications and exhibitions.

Standards in Photojournalism

Given its integral relationship with journalism, Photojournalism came under the rule of the same ethical codes. In the years following World War II, quality Photojournalism insisted on a number of stipulations: no posing or posturing, no artificial lighting, no manipulation of the scene, and no darkroom manipulation beyond cropping or lightening and darkening. All manipulation cast aspersions upon the status of the photograph and, by extension, the reputation of the photographer. In the modern era, early examples of Photojournalism (including Fenton's Valley of the Shadow of Death ) have been subject to revision as questions concerning image authenticity have become more pressing.

The matter of truthfulness continues to be a professional concern in contemporary Photojournalism. However, the pressure to act as an objective onlooker has often been at odds with the photographer's humanitarian instincts. The South African photographer Kevin Carter became well known for his The Vulture and the Little Girl (1993) that shows a famine stricken Sudanese child (who was in fact a boy) being stalked by a vulture. When the image appeared in The New York Times , there was a justifiable public outcry as many readers felt that Carter had a moral duty to go to the child's aid (which he did) before taking his photograph.

Issues of Censorship and Risk

Photojournalists are faced with the same fundamental problem as street photographers: that being the moral quandary of exploiting the lives of strangers for their own gain. However, those in conflict zones will often encounter people suffering in the most wretched of situations, and where that is the case, then the photojournalist can rationalize their actions given that they have undertaken to bring a particular human or political crisis to the attention of the wider world. Yet what is truly unique to the photojournalist covering political unrest or war is the element of personal risk from imprisonment and even injury or death. Indeed, Capa, Taro, and "Chim" all died while photographing combat situations. There can be a psychological cost too. Carter, stating in his suicide note that he was "haunted by the vivid memories," took his own life just four months after winning the 1994 "Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography" for The vulture and the little girl .

Reporting on the death in Syria of the American foreign affairs correspondent and British journalist Marie Colvin in 2016, Tom Seymour of The Guardian noted that, since 1992, some 1,197 photojournalists had lost their lives in conflict situations. Seymour had put this depressing statistic down to the fact that all the major news publications had closed down their foreign bureaus and had come to "rely more and more on independent photographers working without the backing of a large organisation and on a shoestring budget" with the result that photojournalists were now even "targeted as enemy combatants."

Later Developments - After Photojournalism

New journalism.

In 1973 Tom Wolfe edited the anthology The New Journalism , a term coined by Wolfe to describe a style of journalism that reported on a broad range of subject matter over an extended period of time. New Journalism, sometimes referred to as "literary journalism," could be less objective and adopt an experiential or interpretative approach to factual material. Examples of "New Photojournalism" can be found in the photo-essay approach of Eugene and Aileen Smith's Minamata (1975), which documented the effects of methyl-mercury poisoning on inhabitants of the Japanese village of the same name, and Lauren Greenfield' s Girl Culture (2002) which explores the lives of modern American girls through the theme of identity and self-image.

Mary Ellen Mark's Streetwise (1988) meanwhile started as commissioned project but Mark struck up an intense relationship with the street children of Seattle, one of whom was a thirteen-year-old prostitute nicknamed "Tiny." Indeed, having turned down her offer of adoption, Mark consistently returned to photograph her "confidant and friend" until the photographer's death in 2015.

Photojournalism and Visual Culture

At its most rudimental, Photojournalism is a means of telling news stories with pictures. It is then highly problematic to talk of Photojournalism as art. And yet, like art , photojournalism has the power to transform the way people see the world. It is true that several noted photojournalists have been trailblazers in other photographic movements. Cartier-Bresson's work, as both a photojournalist and street photographer, set the standard for both fields for several decades, while iconic images produced in the name of the FSA saw the likes of Walker Evans, Gordon Parks, and Dorothea Lange attain the status of artist. However, Photojournalism has provided inspiration for artists working in the late-1970s and 1980s such as Sherrie Levine whose conceptual art directly copied Evan's iconic image of Allie Mae Burroughs. Levine, with Cindy Sherman and Richard Prince , used photography to examine the codes of representation and meaning through manipulation and appropriation of existing material including Photojournalism. Their work became landmarks of postmodernism . Other artists, including Sam Samore, Anne Collier, and Simon Brann Thorpe, have also drawn upon the history of Photojournalism to inform their art. Thorpe's Toy Soldier No. 61 The Falling Soldier (2015), for instance, references Capa's Falling Soldier in a project where real soldiers posed as plastic toy soldiers in the Sahara Desert as a way of exploring forgotten conflicts (in the Western Sahara in this instance) and how modern spectators have become desensitized by exposure to so many images of death and suffering.

Useful Resources on Photojournalism

• Photojournalism Our Pick By the Getty

• Photojournalism: 150 Years of Outstanding Press Photography By Rueul Golden
• Robert Capa: The Definition Edition By Richard Whelam
• Mathew Brady: Illustrated History of the Civil War By Mathew Brady
• Magnum: Fifty Years at the Front Line of History: The Story of the Legendary Photo Agency By Russell Miller
• Henri Cartier-Bresson Foundation
• Magnum Photos Our Pick
• Matthew Brady page, Library of Congress
• Josef Koudelka page, Magnum Photos
• Robert Capa page, Magnum Photos
• Devin Allen website
• James Nachtwey website
• A terrible beauty: Robert Fenton Our Pick By Simon Grant / By Tate Etc. / September 1, 2005
• Unraveling a 70-Year-Old Photographic Mystery Our Pick By Carole Naggar / Time magazine / Apr 12, 2017
• Chim: A Vivid Retrospective of Europe By Peter Van Agtmael / New York Times / Jan. 17, 2013
• Revisiting the Valley of the Shadow of Death By Carefully Aimed Darts / June 22, 2009
• 40 years on: the exile comes home to Prague Our Pick By Sean O'Hagan / The Guardian / August 23, 2008
• All Cameras Are Good Cameras By John Logan / Buzzfeed / November 13, 2016
• A Life in Photography: Don McCullin By Nicholas Wroe / The Guardian / May 21, 2010

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Content compiled and written by Rebecca Seiferle

Edited and revised, with Summary and Accomplishments added by Antony Todd

Ten examples of immersive photo essays

By Marissa Sapega — Contributing Writer

Photo essays are one of the most powerful forms of storytelling in the last century. From the great depression photographer W. Eugene Smith to the photojournalism of National Geographic or Life Magazine , the best photo essays entertain, educate, and move readers more than words alone ever could. 

But photo essays have changed. Over the last decade, web publishing technologies — including web browsers and file formats — have improved by leaps and bounds. A good photo essays today is more than a collection of images. It’s a truly interactive, immersive, and multimedia experiences.

In this guide, we introduce 10 stunning examples of visually arresting interactive photo essays to fuel your creative juices.

Now, let's set the scene with a short introduction to immersive, interactive photo essays on the web.

What do the BBC, Tripadvisor, and Penguin have in common? They craft stunning, interactive web content with Shorthand. And so can you! Publish your first story for free — no code or web design skills required. Sign up now.

The rise of immersive, interactive photo essays

What is an immersive, interactive photo essay? Let's take these terms one at a time. 

An immersive photo essay uses rich media and story design to capture and keep the reader's attention. Immersive content is typically free of the most distracting elements of the web, such as pop-ups, skyscrapers, and other intrusions on the reading experience.

As a basic rule of thumb, immersive content respects the reader's attention. 

An interactive photo essay is one that allows the reader to control how the content appears. It may include interactive elements, like maps and embedded applications.

More commonly, modern interactive photo stories use a technique known as scrollytelling . Scrollytelling stories allow the reader to trigger animations and other visual effects as they scroll. Many of the examples in this guide use scrollytelling techniques. Read more scrollytelling examples .

Until relatively recently, immersive, interactive photo essays could only be created with the help of a designer or web developer. But with the rise of digital storytelling platforms , anyone can create compelling, dynamic stories without writing a single line of code.

If you're looking to learn more about how to create a photo essay — or are looking for more photo essay ideas  — check out our introduction to photo essays . 

Photo essay topics

If you’re looking for photo essay examples, chances are you’re looking to create a photo essay for yourself. If you’re just getting started, you might want some guidance on exactly what kinds of topics make for great photo essays.

More experienced photographers — feel free to skip this section. But for those who are just starting out, here’s a quick list of classic photo essay subject matter, for all types of photo essays.

• Local events. A great way to start out is photograph local events in your community, such as a high school fundraiser. A bonus is that you’ll have a ready
• Historic sites. Another classic photo essay topic is an exploration of a historic site. This could be a building, a monument, or even just a specific location that has significance.
• Profile of a person. A great way to get to know someone is to profile them in a photo essay. This could be a family member, friend, or even just someone you’ve met.
• Animals in captivity. Another popular subject matter for photo essays is animals in captivity, whether that’s at a zoo or elsewhere.
• A day in the life. Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live someone else’s life for a day? Why not find out and document it in a photo essay?
• Street photography. Another great way to practice your photography skills is to head out into the streets and photograph the everyday lives of people around you. The world has plenty of photo essays of cities like New York and London. But what about street photography in your own backyard?
• Still life photography. Still life photography is all about capturing inanimate objects on film. This could be anything from flowers to furniture to food. It’s a great way to practice your photography skills and learn about composition
• Landscapes . Landscape photography is one of the most popular genres, and for good reason. There are endless possibilities when it comes to finding interesting subjects to shoot. So get out there and start exploring!
• Abandoned buildings. There’s something fascinating about abandoned buildings. They offer a glimpse into the past, and can be eerily beautiful. If you have any in your area, they make for great photo essay subjects.
• Lifestyles. Document someone who lives a lifestyle that’s different from your own. This could be a portrayal of an everyday person, or it could be someone with an unusual job or hobby.
• Social issues. Take photos depicting significant social issues in your community, remembering to respect your subjects.

Ten inspiring photo essay examples

Pink lagoon and peculiar galaxies — July’s best science images

In Pink lagoon and peculiar galaxies , Nature present a mesmerising series of images from the natural world. Highlights include:

• a blink-and-you’ll-miss-it photo of rare albino orcas performing feats of synchronized swimming;
• an arresting aerial view of the aftermath of the flash floods in Germany; and,
• a scarlet gawping Venus flytrap sea anemone. 

The best part? Nature publishes similarly powerful photo essays every month, showcasing some of the best and most creative photography of the natural world anywhere on the web.

Vanishing Lands

Vanishing lands — an ominously interesting photo essay from media company Stuff — opens with a bucolic visual featuring meandering sheep flanked by breathtaking mountains that blur into obscurity.

Soon, more awe-inspiring photos of breathtaking New Zealand farmland appear, accompanied by expressive prose whose tone matches the visuals’ stark beauty.

In this unflinchingly honest photographic essay, Stuff takes the viewer behind the scenes with a day in the life of a high country sheep farmer facing an uncertain future. One stunning photo fades into the next as you scroll through, broken only by the occasional noteworthy quote and accompanying narrative.

Olympic photos: Emotion runs high

This emotionally wrought sports story from NBC begins with a close-up of an anxious Simone Biles, her expression exemplifying the tension and frustration echoed on so many of her fellow athletes’ faces.

The subtitle puts it perfectly: “The agony—and thrill—of competition at the Olympics is written all over their faces.”

Devastation, disappointment, and defeat take centre stage in this piece — but not all the subjects of the photos in this compelling photography essay depict misery. Some of the images, like that taken of the gold medal-winning Russian artistic gymnasts, manage to project the athletes’ joy almost beyond the edges of the screen.

The NBC editors who created this visual story chose to display the series of photos using the entire screen width and limit the copy to simple captions, letting the visuals speak for themselves. The result is a riveting montage of photographs that manage to capture the overarching sentiment of the 2020 Olympic Games.

James Epp: A Twist of the Hand

In A Twist of the Hand , the Museum of Classical Archaeology at the University of Cambridge have produced a gorgeous photo essay. This online art show showcases artist James Epp’s installation, combining photographs of the exhibit with images of museum prints and authentic artefacts.

As you scroll down, close-up shots of the installation make you feel like you’re physically wandering among the ancient sculptures, able to examine hairline spider cracks and tiny divots marking the surface of every antiquated figure. In between the photos—and often flanked by museum prints—are James Epp's musings about what inspired him to create the pieces. It’s an absorbing virtual gallery that will no doubt inspire real life visits to the exhibition.

The Café Racer Revolution

Though it’s a cleverly built piece of interactive content marketing , Honda’s “ Café Racer Revolution ” is also a great photo essay. Alongside information about the latest and greatest motorcycles Honda has to offer, it details the history of the bikers who sought to employ motorcycles (specifically “café racers”) as a way to forge an identity for themselves and project a “statement of individuality.”

Scroll down, and nostalgic black-and-white photos give way to contemporary action shots featuring fully decked-out motorcyclists on various Honda models.

Dynamic photos of bikes rotate them 360 degrees when you mouse over them, and text superimposed over flashy shots rolls smoothly down the screen as you scroll. This photo essay will stir a longing to hit the open road for anyone who has ever dreamed of owning one of Honda’s zippy bikes.

Built to keep Black from white

In Built to keep Black from white , NBC News and BridgeDetroit have built a stunning narrative photo essay that encapsulates the history of Detroit’s Birwood Wall — a literal dividing line intended to separate neighborhoods inhabited by people of different races. 

The piece begins with a brief history of the concrete barrier. Between paragraphs of text, it weaves in quotes from residents who grew up as the wall was erected and a short video. Animated maps highlighting the affected neighborhoods unspool across the screen as you scroll down, accompanied by brief explanations of what the maps represent.

In the series of photographs that follow, contemporary images transition into decades-old shots of the wall when it was newly constructed. This is followed by images of original real estate documents, resident portraits, and additional animated maps — each considering the issue from different angles.

The piece ends with an interactive display of how Detroit’s racial makeup has changed over the past several decades, from majority white to black, and how the wall has impacted the lives of its residents who lived (and died) within its borders.

The story of Black Lives Matter in sport

The BBC pairs illustrations and bold imagery in this photo essay on how athletes participated in the Black Lives Matter movement . At the start, a narrow column of text leads into an iconic image of American football players kneeling during the pre-game national anthem in a solemn protest against police brutality. 

The first excerpt, a summary of Trayvon Martin’s death in 2012, draws you in with piercing prose capped off with photographs that bleed into one another. Every account in the photo essay follows this layout.

WaterAid Climate Stories

Climate change affects everyone on the planet, but some people are feeling the effects more than others. WaterAid’s scrollytelling photo essay illuminates the plight of individuals living in areas where extreme weather conditions — caused by climate change — have drastically impacted the water supply and environment, endangering their livelihoods and ability to survive.

This climate change story starts with an engrossing video that provides an up-close and personal look at the devastation that climate change-induced droughts have wreaked on people and the environment. As you scroll down, images of massively depleted bodies of water with superimposed text and quotes unfold before your eyes. It’s an efficient way to drive home the critical message WaterAid wants to convey: climate change is real, and it’s harming real people.

Each extreme weather story focuses on an individual to help viewers empathise and understand that climate change has real, drastic consequences for millions of people worldwide. The piece ends with a call to action to learn more about and financially support WaterAid’s fight to assist people living in the desperate situations depicted in the essay.

28 Days in Afghanistan

In this piece, Australian photo-journalist Andrew Quilty tells the story of the four weeks he spent in Afghanistan . He captures daily events ranging from the mundane—like a casual visit to his barber—to jarring. More than one photo documents blood-spattered victims of violence.

Viewers must scroll through the piece to follow Andrew’s daily musings and the striking photos that accompany them. His photo essay is a powerful example of how scrollytelling is transforming the art of long-form journalism .

La carrera lunática de Musk y Bezos (Musk and Bezos' lunatic careers)

Billionaires Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos are angling to conquer the final frontier: space.

El Periódico captures their story via a whimsically illustrated photo essay, filled with neon line drawings and bold photos of the massive spaceships, the hangars that house them, and footprints on the moon. La carrera lunática de Musk y Bezos describes the battle between the two titans’ space companies (Blue Origin and SpaceX) for the honor of partially funding NASA’s next mission to the moon.

As you scroll down, white and fluorescent yellow words on a black background roll smoothly over images. The team at El Periódico slips in stylistic animations to break up the text—such as rocket ships with shimmering “vapour trails”—then ups the ante with a series of moon images that transition into portraits of the 12 U.S. astronauts who visited the celestial body.

The photo essay ends with the question: “Who will be the next to leave their footprints on the dusty lunar soil?” At the time of publishing, NASA had not yet decided between the two companies. (Spoiler alert: SpaceX won .)

Marissa Sapega is a seasoned writer, editor, and digital marketer with a background in web and graphic design.

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African Americans at Work

From enslaved workers in the 19th century to agricultural, industrial, and professional workers in the 20th and 21st centuries, African Americans have always been a vital part of the American workforce. The photographs from the collection of the National Museum of African American History and Culture below document African Americans at work from the 1860s to today.

Before and During the Civil War

Few photographic images of early American workplaces exist. After all, photography was not invented (in France) until the 1820s, was not introduced in America until the 1840s, and did not become an affordable amateur hobby until the 1880s. Most photographs of African Americans at work before and during the Civil War depict enslaved or recently emancipated workers on farms or plantations

No. 24: A Plantation Scene In South Carolina , ca. 1860. Photograph by S.T. Souder.

Women and children in a cotton field, 1860s. Photograph by J.H. Aylsworth.

Enslaved women and their children near Alexandria, Virginia, December 2, 1861, to March 10, 1862. Photograph by James E. Larkin.

Charleston Slave Hire Badges

From 1800 to 1865 in Charleston, North Carolina, slave hire badges were worn by enslaved individuals who were hired out by their enslavers to work for others. The enslaver paid an annual fee for the badge, providing revenue for the city of Charleston. Wages earned by the enslaved were often kept by the enslaver, but sometimes were shared with the enslaved. The badges served to identify those African Americans who were allowed to move about the city and to ensure that they only worked at jobs for which they were qualified, thus limiting competition with white workers. While some enslaved individuals learned skilled trades (“Mechanic”) useful to their enslavers in the plantation economy, a more common occupation was “House Servant.” These badges were public symbols of the hiring out system which allowed enslavers to allow their slaves a sense of autonomy, while maintaining control over them and profiting from their labor.

Charleston slave badge from 1812 for Fisher No. 103.

Charleston slave badge from 1811 for Porter No. 27.

Charleston slave badge from 1800 for House Servant No. 354.

Charleston slave badge from 1816 for Mechanic No. 39.

Civil War Soldiers

During the Civil War , approximately 179,000 African American men served in the Union Army as U.S. Colored Troops and over 20,000 in the Union Navy. Although Black soldiers were involved in forty major battles and hundreds of skirmishes—and 16 were awarded the Medal of Honor—a disproportionate amount of Black soldiers were assigned work as laborers, digging ditches, building fortifications, and burying the dead.

Carte-de-visite of a sailor named Jim, late 19th century. 

Tintype of a Civil War soldier, 1861–1865.

Photograph of members of the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, 1863–1865.

Colored Pickets on Duty Near Dutch Gap , 1864. 

The Era of Jim Crow

The American nation was fundamentally changed—reconstructed—by three major social process in the century following the emancipation of four million enslaved individuals and the end of the Civil War. Each of these processes of change took decades to be completed and each changed the world of work for both Black and white workers.

First, the 13th, 14th, and 15th Amendments to the Constitution—the so-called Reconstruction Amendments—abolished slavery across the nation, established the notion of “due process of law,” defined citizenship to include everyone born in the United States, extended voting rights to all Black men, and empowered the federal government to protect these rights for all citizens. Newly emancipated African Americans quickly understood that they needed to participate in both the federal legislative system and the court system to enlarge and protect their employment opportunities as integral to their civil rights. While some African Americans found success as professionals in the areas of law, education, and business, by far the great majority were forced into restrictive labor contracts as sharecroppers, while some were even forced into labor as convicts.

W. A. Neely's blacksmith shop in Laurinburg, North Carolina, January 1, 1910.      

Four unidentified men in cooks’ uniforms on a porch, 1941–43.

J. J. Cotten Barbershop, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, ca. 1910.

Convict Labor

According to the Prison Policy Initiative , the United States houses more prisoners than any other country, of whom 38.5% are Black. Within these prisons, many are forced to work, contributing to a multibillion-dollar industry. Yet this form of labor is not included in official employment statistics of Black workers, causing a sector of Black labor to be heavily ignored.

After the passage of the 13th Amendment, involuntary servitude was abolished, “except as punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted.” Soon after, states began passing laws, known as Black Codes, leading to mass incarceration of Black individuals. The system of convict leasing, where prisoners or prisons could legally be purchased to perform labor, began shortly after the Civil War. In some cases, this led to prisoners working on the same lands and for people that previously enslaved them. The impacts of these systems cannot be understated—in 1898, 73% of Alabama’s annual state revenue reportedly came from convict leasing. Many protested and spoke out against this system, calling it slavery under a different name. 

Convict leasing was abolished in all states by the 1930s. However, with the fall of one form of prison labor came a new one—chain gangs. This form of incarcerated labor involved having chains wrapped around the ankles of multiple prisoners while they worked, ate, and slept outside of prison walls. These incarcerated workers labored at gunpoint or risked whipping—leading again to many protesting its use. By the 1950s, chain gangs were abolished in all states due to its violation of the 8th Amendment's “cruel and unusual punishment” clause. 

Today, prison labor continues to be prevalent. In 1934, Franklin D. Roosevelt signed Executive Order #6917 to establish the Federal Prison Industries, now called UNICOR. This program allows the use of incarcerated labor for the government. Incarcerated workers in prison, jails, and even immigration centers work to support their operations and maintenance of prisons. They also work in state-run prison factories, producing common goods and services.  

Convict laborers at Swannanoa Cut, Asheville, North Carolina, ca. 1885. Photograph by Thomas H. Lindsey.

The second fundamental change in African American labor came through the laws and social customs that reinforced white supremacy and a system of “separate but equal” segregation—Jim Crow society. This also created a new hierarchy of occupations: those that were reserved for whites and those open to Black citizens.

Two unidentified women in uniform with toddler, Port Gibson, Mississippi, 1940. Photograph by Marion Post Wolcott.

Beautician brushing an unidentified women’s hair in salon chair, mid-20th century. Photograph by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson.

Grocery Store, 14th & U Streets , ca. 1945. Photograph by Robert H. McNeill.

Barbershop , ca. 1945. Photograph by Robert H. McNeill.

Pullman Porters

Pullman Porters occupied a coveted position in Black communities in the late 19th and early 20th century. These workers, typically Black men, would assist with luggage, maintain sleeping quarters, and serve passengers in the Pullman Palace Car Company’s luxury sleeping cars. The pay was higher than most other employers at the time, travel was possible, and many were able to move on to better jobs in hotels and restaurants.

However, the position did not come without discrimination and racism. George Pullman wanted Black porters, specifically those who were formerly enslaved, because he believed they would work under harsh conditions and would attend to every need of passengers. Porters were often called “boy” or “George” instead of their own names, and they were commonly berated or harassed by customers in the cars.

The Pullman maids were a lesser-known employee of the company: Black women who would clean Pullman cars and cater to guests. They typically worked with women, the elderly, and the infirmed. They often received lower wages from tips than Pullman Porters who worked in cars with businessmen and politicians.

Pullman Porter T.R. Joseph in uniform, ca. 1930s.

Preparing Dinner in the Dining Car Kitchen , mid-20th century.

Pullman Porter James Bryant in uniform, 1973.

Historically, a major sector of work for Black women was midwifery . This practice included caring for mothers and infants during childbirth. Black midwives often used tactics derived from African tradition and were seen very highly in their communities. Midwives were also incredibly important to enslaved communities, as they could keep records of ancestry and community ties. After the Civil War, Black midwives continued to be incredibly important, especially in rural Southern states. Notably, they did not just work for Black mothers, they also supported white mothers in their communities.

With the medicalization of childbirth, the practices of midwives began to be questioned and delegitimized. Maternal and infant mortality rates began to rise, and many blamed midwives. However, midwives had fewer instances of maternal and infant mortality than medical doctors. The passage of the Sheppard-Towner Maternity and Infancy Protection Act of 1921 made traditional midwifing more difficult with increased regulations, mandatory trainings, and supervision necessary to continue working in the field. Black midwives were often being taught by nurses with less training than themselves.

While leading to better health outcomes of mothers and infants, these regulations led to increased barriers for Black midwives to work in professional maternal healthcare. In particular, requirements to receive state licensing became an obstacle for many. In 2021, only 7% of certified nurse-midwives and certified midwives were Black . Some believe that these historical systemic barriers to Black midwives have contributed to the prominent Black maternal mortality rate seen today

Midwife standing next to woman in bed with bassinet to her left, mid-20th century. Photograph by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson.

Collection of the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture, Gift of Robert Galbraith, © 1987 Robert Galbraith

Midwife Susie Carey, 1940–1953.

The third change in Black labor that came about during the Jim Crow Era was the Industrial Revolution. This transition from a rural, agricultural society to an urban, industrial one, was driven by new technologies in manufacturing, agriculture, transportation, and communication, that created entirely new occupations and work processes.

Workers outside the Grendel Textile Mill, 1923–1924.

Student working a printing press, ca. 1935. Photograph by Lewis Wickes Hine.

Workers at the International Harvester tractor works, 1946–1948. From the series The Way of Life of the Northern Negro. Photograph by Wayne F. Miller.

Postal Workers

The United States Postal Service (USPS) plays an important role in Black labor history. As of 2022, almost 29% of the USPS was Black, making it one of the top employers of African Americans in the United States. The history of Black workers in the postal service can be traced to the institution of slavery, with many enslaved persons working as transportation contractors. However, rebellions in Haiti sparked fear in Southern whites, leading to Congress prohibiting African American mail carriers in the postal service until 1865. During the Civil War, the first known Black post office clerk was appointed, William Cooper Nell, in Boston, Massachusetts. He is also believed to be the first Black civilian employee of the federal government.

In 1914, the Civil Service Commission issued a new order requiring applicants for federal jobs to submit a photograph. These policies led to the founding of the National Alliance of Postal and Federal Employees (NAPFE) an independent, African American controlled labor union with a mission to eliminate discrimination and injustice in the federal service. The 1940s saw the passage of Executive Order #8802, which created the Fair Employment Practice Committee (FEPC) to oversee claims of discrimination. By the 1960s, Black representation in the Postal Service was seen at higher leadership levels, with the three biggest post offices in the country having Black Postmasters. In 1971, the Postal Service adopted an Equal Employment Opportunity policy, which aided in the recruitment of minority and female applicants to the organization. Today, the USPS has the highest median annual and hourly wage within the top ten occupations with the highest proportions of Black workers. The wage gap is also narrower among postal workers than in the private sector.

A postal worker sorting mail into cubby holes, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1950. Photograph by Charles “Teenie” Harris.

A mailman outside of Rev. H.C. Anderson's photo shop, mid-20th century. Photograph by Rev. Henry Clay Anderson. 

The Post-Civil Rights Era

According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics , in 2019, 29% of employed Black Americans worked in education and health services. Another 10% worked in retail trade and 10% in leisure and hospitality. Less than 1% worked in mining, gas, and oil and barely 2% in agriculture, forestry, and fishing.

Architect Norma Sklarek reviewing plans, ca. 1979. Photograph by Jasmin Photo.

Photograph of flight attendant Casey Grant working mid-flight on a 757, 1985–1987.

Bob Johnson, President and founder Black Entertainment Television, in his Georgetown office in the early days of B.E.T evolution , June 5, 1981. Photograph by Milton Williams.

We still have much to learn about the world of work that African Americans have faced over the past four centuries and how it has changed. Until the 20th century, agriculture occupied over 90% of Black workers and now it occupies less than 1%. The causes are many: civil rights activism, affirmative action policies, educational opportunities, entrepreneurial energy, international competition, and the shift from industrial to digital and finance capitalism.

As these photos demonstrate, it is too easy to simply apply labels: “agricultural worker,” “domestic worker,” “skilled tradesman,” “unskilled labor,” “professional,” “union worker.” African Americans are and have been an integral part of the American workforce for centuries.

VIEW PHOTOGRAPHS OF AFRICAN AMERICANS AT WORK

Written by Bill Pretzer, Senior Curator of History; Amira Dehmani, Summer 2023 Stanford in Government Afrofuturism Curatorial Intern; and Douglas Remley, Rights & Publications Manager. Published on September 1, 2023

A Rice Raft, South Carolina

A Rice Raft, South Carolina , captured 1895; printed 1904. Photograph by Strohmeyer & Wyman. Published by Underwood & Underwood. 

A woman with plow and oxen, Alabama

A woman with plow and oxen, Alabama, ca. 1875. Photograph by Russell Bros.

A Black nurse with two white children

A Black nurse with two white children, mid- to late 19th century. 

Picking Strawberries, Plant City, Florida

PICKING STRAWBERRIES, PLANT CITY, FLA. , 1946. 

Weighing cotton, Thomasville, Georgia

No. 44, Weighing Cotton , ca. 1895. From the series Views of Thomasville and Vicinity . Photograph by A. W. Möller. 

A store clerk with a customer, Harlem, New York

A store clerk with a customer, Harlem, New York. Photograph by Lloyd W. Yearwood. 

Councilwoman Hilda Mason in her office, Washington, D. C.

Washington D. C. Councilwoman at Large Hilda Mason of the D. C. Statehood Party in her office in the District Building , July 25, 1983. Photograph by Milton Williams. 

Men outside the United Steelworkers of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Men outside the United Steelworkers of America, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, August 1946. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

A coal miner, Library, Pennsylvania

A coal miner, Library, Pennsylvania, ca. 1947. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

Two young men in wood shop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania

Two young men in wood shop, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, 1930–1950. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

A construction worker, Washington, D.C.

Construction Flag Person , 1978. Photograph by Milton Williams. 

A policeman, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. 

A policeman in a motorcycle with a sidecar, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, mid-20th century. Photograph by Charles "Teenie" Harris. 

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray, Arlington, Virginia

Rev. Dr. Pauli Murray Esq. (1910-1985), civil rights lawyer and Episcopal priest was an activist who fought to dismantle segregation and end discrimination through the courts and on the streets , December 21, 1977. Photograph by Milton Williams. 

Shrimpers on boat, Hilton Head Island, South Carolina

Shrimpers Eugene Orage and Diogenese Miller on boat, Hilton Head Island, SC , 2004. From the series  Shadows of the Gullah Geechee . Photograph by Pete Marovich. 

A construction worker, Harlem, New York

A construction worker operating a front end loader, Harlem, New York, 1987. Photograph by Lloyd W. Yearwood. 

Salt-N-Pepa recording at Bayside Studios, Queens, New York

Salt-N-Pepa recording at Bayside Studios, February 6, 1989. Photograph by Al Pereira. 

A porter from the Hotel Palomares, Pamona, California

A porter from the Hotel Palomares, Pamona, California, 1885–1899. 

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Photo Essay

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7 Picture and Photo Essay Books to Teach History to Kids

History as a topic is a pretty big, all-encompassing one. We want our kids to learn about history—and more than just the names and dates plunked down in textbooks—but it’s hard to be systematic about it. There are so many sequential lines to follow, like government succession, social movements, and popular culture, but even within those, there are countless perspectives and experiences. So, to augment traditional learning, sometimes some spot learning about a specific person, topic, or event is helpful to round out the picture.

Several books have recently come across my desk that all deal with a person, event, or movement in United States history. Some are in a traditional picture book format, while others include photos and text in what amounts to a long photo essay. All but one should be appropriate for elementary students (and the one that might not be is at the bottom and is marked; it should be fine for high schoolers). All are from a publisher named Calkins Creek, a publisher that I’ll be keeping a closer eye on from now on.

Books About People

The efficient, inventive (often annoying) melvil dewey by alexis o’neill, illustrated by edwin fotheringham.

When Melvil Dewey learned that each library organized its books using a different system, he set out to create one that can be used by all, so people who knew how to find books in one library could find them in others. After studying different classification systems, he devised one based on numbers and decimals, narrowing down topics into finer and finer categories, smaller and smaller numbers. He also fought for free libraries and to establish a library school that admitted women (!). Dewey found new ways to encourage silence in libraries to promote studying. And he did so much more.

Melvil Dewey was all about efficiency, even getting rid of superfluous letters in his name. This book gives a great overview of his achievements, despite the sometimes-distracting large, capped, bolded words inserted in the text for emphasis. The Author’s Note and other texts in the back give parents a good context for his life, giving more detail on the book’s content and talking about the not-so-great aspects of his life and career; you may want to read these parts first before sharing the book with your kids.

“Smelly” Kelly and His Super Senses: How James Kelly’s Nose Saved the New York City Subway by Beth Anderson, Illustrated by Jenn Harney

Sometimes your overactive senses can be a superpower. That was the case for James Kelly whose sense of smell—which is a liability for some jobs—was an asset within the New York City subway system, where he could track down messes, water and gas leaks, and anything else that gave off a smell, preventing cave-ins and explosions and saving people in the process. He went on to learn about different types of leaks and clogs, and became a bit of a leak detective around the city. He branched out to the sounds of leaks, and eventually trained others in how to do this type of work.

Similar to the Dewey book above, this book talks about James Kelly in a simplified way, but then paints a slightly more complete picture through a bit of extra content at the end. The author did use a bit of poetic license in spots in the narrative, but James Kelly’s life is well-represented in this book.

Finding a Way Home: Mildred and Richard Loving and the Fight for Marriage Equality by Larry Dane Brimmer

Though we continue to live with racism every day in this country, all but the oldest of us Gen-Xers, along with those younger than us, can’t remember a day when it was actually illegal to be in what was called a “mixed marriage.” It has been legal in the United States since June 12, 1967 when the Supreme Court unanimously decided that interracial marriage was legal, thanks to the case brought by Mildred and Richard Loving, a married couple from Virginia whose marriage was then against Virginia law. We now celebrate this Supreme Court decision every year as Loving Day. While their journey is quite historic in its own right, it happened right in the middle of the larger Civil Rights Movement of the 1960s, and was followed by other fights for marriage equality, all of which is covered in this book.

The book is filled with crisp photographs of the major players and locations, scans of documents such as an arrest warrant and marriage license, a letter from the Lovings, and a telegram announcing the Supreme Court’s decision, all woven together with a narrative about the events. This book is more of an early-grade reference book than a picture book, complete with table of contents, bibliography, and index. In addition to being a great read, it’d be useful for research reports for early grades.

Books About Events and Movements

The pig war: how a porcine tragedy taught england and america to share by emma bland smith, illustrated by alison jay.

It’s 1859 on the island of San Juan off the coast of the Pacific Northwest. There, a small number of British and American people lived alongside each other on generally decent terms. That is, until a pig (British) ate some potatoes (American) and the potatoes’ farmer shot the pig. Oh, that wouldn’t do. Even though the farmer offered to pay for the pig, the British pig owner asked for far too much money and the farmer refused to pay. This event almost brought the two countries to war, with warships and military arriving at the island from both sides to fight over who really should be in charge of the island (yes, it had escalated quickly).

This book tells the tale about how they avoided that war (after a ridiculous amount of escalation) and managed to—eventually—come to an agreement to share the island. The back of the book includes plenty of additional historical background for the story along with a few photographs, and information on how to visit the island yourself.

A lesser-known piece of history told through incredibly lovely, evocative illustrations and highly amusing text, this book is my favorite of these seven. It packs a moral lesson punch as well as being a great story, so it’s one not to be missed by you or your kids.

The Teachers March!: How Selma’s Teachers Changed History by Sandra Neil Wallace and Rich Wallace, Illustrated by Charly Palmer

In 1965, during a time of great police brutality and voter suppression (worse than now), science teacher Reverend F.D. Reese organized fellow teachers to hold a march in Selma, Alabama. After ineffective, smaller marches to the courthouse, now they were going to have a larger, more organized march there to take a stand, a brave move when the very people who are supposed to protect everyone’s life, safety, and livelihood instead created an environment of fear for one’s life, safety, and livelihood. Reverend Reese even got Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., to help them. The marchers were teachers: educated, well-dressed leaders of their community marching for change.

This book covers this important event during the civil rights movement through moving illustrations, and touches on illegal voting tests, racist police officers, and oppressive power structures. It does mention beatings by the police and various kinds of institutionalized racism, but it focuses on marching for equal rights and how taking a stand can make a difference and empower others to do the same. It tells the story in a bit of a disjointed way, but the idea comes across clearly. And, as with the books above, the back of the book includes more information about the event along with photos of some of the major players, including Reverend Reese.

Farmers Unite!: Planting a Protest for Fair Prices by Lindsay H. Metcalf

Once upon a time, farming was a good way to make a living. But at some point, it became more expensive to grow food than it was for farmers to sell it. So, many farms were auctioned off with people losing their family businesses, our whole country losing our sources of food production. So, in the late 1970s, farmers began to take a stand, demanding parity (“a selling price above the cost of crop production”) for their crops. They “marched” on state capitals by riding their tractors there. But they needed to do more. It was time for a “march” on Washington. This book covers this event.

Up to 10,000 tractors, trucks, and campers headed toward buildings like the U.S. Capitol and the U.S. Department of Agriculture. About 30,000 farmers and their allies gathered to make themselves heard. But the vehicles were causing traffic nightmares for the city, and police thought that corralling them on the National Mall would show them who’s boss. The farmers kept up their efforts to be heard, attending congressional hearings and explaining why they were having trouble making ends meet. In the end, Mother Nature intervened with a snow storm that brought the city to a standstill. Did the farmers show hard feelings? No, they helped by towing cars, getting ambulances back on the road, and delivering medicine. They even drove members of Congress to work. Then, after sowing some new grass seeds on the Mall, the farmers and their tractors headed back home.

But their problems weren’t even close to being solved. The crisis continued and even got worse. Finally, Willie Nelson had the idea for a benefit concert for farms, and Farm Aid was born. The music, fundraising, and activism got people’s attention. People, including lawmakers, were finally learning that farms and farmers were integral to our nation.

The back of this book includes more about the story, including what has been done since the end of the crisis. It also includes U.S. farm prices throughout the years and a very long list of sources.

Blood and Germs: The Civil War Battle Against Wounds and Disease by Gail Jarrow

Note: This final book is a bit grisly and would probably be best for high schoolers or possibly mature middle schoolers (parents should preview the book in advance, just in case).

The Civil War was an era of much death, often from battlefield wounds, but even more often from disease. It was also a time of concentrated experience and learning for medical professionals, and they learned the importance of sanitation in medical outcomes, along with better ways to preserve life (and limb). This book combines science and history in an in-depth look—across over 100 pages with plenty of text and images—at medicine, injuries, illnesses, and treatments during the Civil War.

Broken up by topic rather than in narrative form, this book covers all sides of the battle, though more primary sources were available for the Union army so much of the focus is there. Since disease killed more people than battlefield injuries, the book talks at length about illnesses, insects, microbes, and all the ways one could get infected with disease, along with various treatments that were tried (some of which were not for the faint of heart). It covers organizations that tried to help, such as the United States Sanitary Commission and the ladies’ aid societies. The YMCA even pitched in.

The book also goes into different ways the soldiers could be wounded and how they were removed from the battlefield for treatment at field hospitals. It goes into quite grisly details of surgery and infection, healing (or not), and what came next for the survivors. Women’s roles during the war are also given a good deal of attention. Additionally, the end matter of this book is pretty extensive with over 30 pages of notes, sources, a glossary, a timeline, and more.

Though that last book is mostly for older kids, the rest are fantastic picture and photo books for giving kids glimpses into our nation’s history. The subject matter covered by this list is diverse enough that there should be something of interest to most everyone.

Note: I received copies of these books for review purposes. This post contains affiliate links.

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3 thoughts on “ 7 picture and photo essay books to teach history to kids ”.

Thank you, great selection! The picture books and pictures really give children a glimpse into the history of our country. The subjects covered in the list you have prepared are quite varied, because it is important that every child can find something interesting. If necessary, you can always help with writing an essay by ordering it from specialists, such as – https://writemyessays.me/ .

It is important to inculcate reading habits in kids from a young age https://tinytwigorganic.com/

https://geekmom.com/2021/01/7-picture-and-photo-essay-books-to-teach-history-to-kids/

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How to Create a Photo Essay in 9 Steps (with Examples)

Photo Editing , Tutorials

This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, we may earn a commission at no additional cost to you. We only recommend products we fully support or use ourselves.  Our full disclaimer

What is a photo essay?

• Photo essays vs photo stories
• How photo essays help you
• 9 Steps to create photo essays

How to share your photo essays

Read Time: 11 minutes

Gather up a handful of images that seem to go together, and voila! It’s a photo essay, right? Well… no. Though, this is a common misconception.

In reality, a photo essay is much more thoughtful and structured than that. When you take the time to craft one, you’re using skills from all facets of our craft – from composition to curation.

In this guide, you’ll learn what makes a photo essay an amazing project that stretches your skills. You'll also learn exactly how to make one step by step.

• Photo essay vs photo story

A photo essay is a collection of images based around a theme, a topic, a creative approach, or an exploration of an idea. Photo essays balance visual variety with a cohesive style and concept.

What's the difference between a photo essay and a photo story?

The terms photo essay and photo story are often used interchangeably. Even the dictionary definition of “photo essay” includes using images to convey either a theme or a story.

But in my experience, a photo essay and a photo story are two different things. As you delve into the field of visual storytelling, distinguishing between the two helps you to take a purposeful approach to what you’re making .

The differences ultimately lie in the distinctions between theme, topic and story.

Themes are big-picture concepts. Example: Wildness

Topics are more specific than themes, but still overarching. Example : Wild bears of Yellowstone National Park

Stories are specific instances or experiences that happen within, or provide an example for, a topic or theme. Example: A certain wild bear became habituated to tourists and was relocated to maintain its wildness

Unlike a theme or topic, a story has particular elements that make it a story. They include leading characters, a setting, a narrative arc, conflict, and (usually) resolution.

With that in mind, we can distingush between a photo essay and a photo story.

Themes and Topics vs Stories

A photo essay revolves around a topic, theme, idea, or concept. It visually explores a big-picture something .

This allows a good deal of artistic leeway where a photographer can express their vision, philosophies, opinions, or artistic expression as they create their images.

A photo story  is a portfolio of images that illustrate – you guessed it – a story.

Because of this, there are distinct types of images that a photo story uses that add to the understanding, insight, clarity and meaning to the story for viewers. While they can certainly be artistically crafted and visually stunning, photo stories document something happening, and rely on visual variety for capturing the full experience.

A photo essay doesn’t need to have the same level of structured variety that a photo story requires. It can have images that overlap or are similar, as they each explore various aspects of a theme.

Photo essays can be about any topic. If you live in a city, consider using your nature photography to make an essay about the wildlife that lives in your neighborhood . 

The role of text with photos

A photo story typically runs alongside text that narrates the story. We're a visual species, and the images help us feel like we are there, experiencing what's happening. So, the images add significant power to the text, but they're often a partner to it.

This isn’t always the case, of course. Sometimes photo stories don’t need or use text. It’s like reading a graphic novel that doesn’t use text. Moving through the different images that build on each other ultimately unveils the narrative.

Photo essays don’t need to rely on text to illuminate the images' theme or topic. The photographer may use captions (or even a text essay), or they may let the images speak for themselves.

Definitions are helpful guidelines (not strict rules)

Some people categorize photo essays as either narrative or thematic. That's essentially just calling photo stories “narrative photo essays” and photo essays “thematic photo essays.”

But, a story is a defined thing, and any writer/editor will tell you themes and topics are not the same as stories. And we use the word “story” in our daily lives as it’s defined. So, it makes far more sense to name the difference between a photo essay and a photo story, and bask in the same clarity writers enjoy .

Photo stories illustrate a particular experience, event, narrative, something that happened or is happening.

Photo essays explore an idea, concept, topic, theme, creative approach, big-picture something .

Both photo essays and photo stories are immensely powerful visual tools. And yes, the differences between them can certainly be blurred, as is always the case with art.

Simply use this distinction as a general guideline, providing extra clarity around what you’re making and why you're making it.

To dig into specific types of images used to create powerful photo stories, check out this training: 6 Must-Have Shots for a Photo Story. 

Meanwhile, let’s dig deeper into photo essays.

Photo essays are a chance to try new styles or techniques that stretch your skills and creativity. This image was part of an essay exploring simplicity and shape, and helped me learn new skills in black and white post-processing.

How photo essays improve your photography

Creating photo essays is an amazing antidote if you’ve ever felt a lack of direction or purpose in your photography. Photo essays help build your photographic skills in at least 3 important ways.

1. You become more strategic in creating a body of work

It's easy to get stuck in a rut of photographing whatever pops up in front of you. And when you do, you end up with a collection of stand-alone shots.

These singles may work fine as a print, a quick Instagram post, or an addition to your gallery of shots on your website. But amassing a bunch of one-off shots limits your opportunities as a photographer for everything from exhibits to getting your work published.

Building photo essays pushes you to think strategically about what you photograph, why, and how. You're working toward a particular deliverable – a cohesive visual essay – with the images you create.

This elevates your skills in crafting your photo essay, and in how you curate the rest of your work, from galleries on your website to selecting images to sell as prints .

2. You become more purposeful in your composition skills

Composition is so much more than just following the rule of thirds, golden spirals, or thinking about the angle of light in a shot.

Composition is also about thinking ahead in what you’re trying to accomplish with a photograph – from what you’re saying through it to its emotional impact on a viewer – and where it fits within a larger body of work.

Photo essays push you to think critically about each shot – from coming up with fresh compositions for familiar subjects, to devising surprising compositions to fit within a collection, to creating compositions that expand on what’s already in a photo essay.

You’re pushed beyond creating a single pleasing frame, which leads you to shoot more thoughtfully and proactively than ever.

(Here’s a podcast episode on switching from reactive shooting to proactive shooting.)

3. You develop strong editing and curation skills

Selecting which images stay, and which get left behind is one of the hardest jobs on a photographer’s to-do list. Mostly, it’s because of emotional attachment.

You might think it’s an amazing shot because you know the effort that went into capturing it. Or perhaps when you look at it, you get a twinge of the joy or exhilaration you felt the moment you captured it. There’s also the second-guessing that goes into which of two similar images is the best – which will people like more? So you’re tempted to just show both.

Ultimately, great photographers appear all the more skilled because they only show their best work. That in and of itself is a skill they’ve developed through years of ruthlessly editing their own work.

Because the most powerful photo essays only show a handful of extraordinary images, you’re bound to develop the very same critical skill (and look all the more talented because of it).

Photo essays are also a great stepping stone to creating photo stories. If you’re interested in moving beyond stand-alone shots and building stories, shooting photo essays will get your creative brain limbered up and ready for the adventure of photo stories.

A photo essay exploring the natural history of a favorite species is an exciting opportunity for an in-depth study. For me, that was a photo essay on emotive images of the American dipper (Cinclus mexicanus) as it hunts in streams. 

9 Simple steps to create your photo essays

1. clarify your theme.

Choose a theme, topic, or concept you want to explore. Spend some time getting crystal clear on what you want to focus on. It helps to write out a few sentences, or even a few paragraphs noting:

• What you want the essay to be about
• What kinds of images you want to create as part of it
• How you’ll photograph the images
• The style, techniques, or gear you might use to create your images
• What “success” looks like when you’re done with your photo essay

You don’t have to stick to what you write down, of course. It can change during the image creation process. But fleshing your idea out on paper goes a long way in clarifying your photo essay theme and how you’ll go about creating it.

2. Create your images

Grab your camera and head outside!

As you’re photographing your essay, allow yourself some freedom to experiment. Try unusual compositions or techniques that are new to you.

Stretch your style a little, or “try on” the style of other photographers you admire who have photographed similar subjects.

Photo essays are wonderful opportunities to push yourself outside of your comfort zone and grow as a photographer.

Remember that a photo essay is a visually cohesive collection of images that make sense together. So, while you might stretch yourself into new terrain as you shoot, try to keep that approach, style, or strategy consistent.

Don’t be afraid to create lots of images. It’s great to have lots to choose from in the editing process, which comes up next.

3. Pull together your wide edit

Once you’ve created your images, pull together all the images that might make the cut. This could be as many as 40-60 images. Include anything you want to consider for the final essay in the wide edit.

From here, start weeding out images that:

• are weaker in composition or subject matter
• stand out like a sore thumb from the rest of the collection
• Are similar to other stronger images in the collection

It's helpful to review the images at thumbnail size. You make more instinctive decisions and can more easily see the body of work as a whole. If an image is strong even at thumbnail size to stand out from similar frames while also partnering well with other images in the collection, that's a good sign it's strong enough for the essay.

4. Post-process your images for a cohesive look

Now it’s time to post-process the images. Use whatever editing software you’re comfortable with to polish your images.

Again, a photo essay has a cohesive visual look. If you use presets, filters, or other tools, use them across all the images.

5. Finalize your selection

It’s time to make the tough decisions. Select only the strongest for your photo essay from your group of images.

Each image should be strong enough to stand on its own and make sense as part of the whole group.

Many photo essays range from 8-12 images. But of course, it varies based on the essay. The number of images you have in your final photo essay is up to you.

Remember, less is more. A photo essay is most powerful when each image deserves to be included.

6. Put your images in a purposeful order

Create a visual flow with your images. Decide which image is first, and build from there. Use compositions, colors, and subject matter to decide which image goes next, then next, then next in the order.

Think of it like music: notes are arranged in a way that builds energy, or slows it down, surprise listeners with a new refrain, or drop into a familiar chorus. How the notes are ordered creates emotional arcs for listeners.

How you order your images is similar.

Think of the experience a viewer will have as they look at one image, then the next, and the next. Order your images so they create the experience you want your audience to have.

7. Get feedback

The best photographers make space for feedback, even when it’s tough to hear. Your work benefits from not just hearing feedback, but listening to it and applying what you learn from it.

Show your photo essay to people who have different sensibilities or tastes. Friends, family members, fellow photographers – anyone you trust to give you honest feedback.

Watch their reactions and hear what they say about what they’re seeing. Use their feedback to guide you in the next step.

8. Refine, revise, and finalize

Let your photo essay marinate for a little while. Take a day or two away from it. Then use your freshened eyes and the feedback you received from the previous step to refine your essay.

Swap out any selects you might want to change and reorder the images if needed.

9. Add captions

Even if you don’t plan on displaying captions with your images, captioning your images is a great practice to get into. It gives context, story, and important information to each image. And, more than likely, you will want to use these captions at some point when you share your photo essay, which we dive into later in this article.

Add captions to the image files using Lightroom, Bridge, or other software programs.

Create a document, such as a Google or Word doc, with captions for each image.

In your captions, share a bit about the story behind the image, or the creation process. Add whatever makes sense to share that provides a greater understanding of the image and its purpose.

Photo essays allow you to explore deliberate style choices, such as a focus on shapes, patterns, textures, and lines. Since each photo is part of a larger essay, it encourages you to be bold with choices you might not otherwise make. 

5 Examples of amazing nature photo essays

1. “how the water shapes us” from the nature conservancy.

This gorgeous essay, crafted with the work of multiple photographers, explores the people and places within the Mississippi River basin. Through the images, we gain a sense of how the water influences life from the headwater all the way to the Gulf of Mexico. Notice how each photographer is tasked with the same theme, yet approaches it with their own distinct style and vision. It is a wonderful example of the sheer level of visual variety you can have while maintaining a consistent style or theme.

View it here

2. “A Cyclist on the English Landscape” from New York Times’ The World Through A Lens series

This photo essay is a series of self-portraits by travel photographer Roff Smith while “stuck” at home during the pandemic. As he peddled the roads making portraits, the project evolved into a “celebration of traveling at home”. It’s a great example of how visually consistent you can be inside a theme while making each image completely unique.

3. “Vermont, Dressed In Snow” from New York Times’ The World Through A Lens series

This essay by aerial photographer Caleb Kenna uses a very common photo essay theme: snow. Because all images are aerial photographs, there’s a consistency to them. Yet, the compositions are utterly unique from one another. It’s a great example of keeping viewers surprised as they move from one image to the next while still maintaining a clear focus on the theme.

4. “Starling-Studded Skies” from bioGraphic Magazine

This beautiful essay is by Kathryn Cooper, a physicist trained in bioinformatics, and a talented photographer. She used a 19th century photographic technique, chronophotography, to create images that give us a look at the art and science of starling murmurations. She states: “I’m interested in the transient moments when chaos briefly changes to order, and thousands of individual bodies appear to move as one.” This essay is a great example of deep exploration of a concept using a specific photographic technique.

View it here   (Note: must be viewed on desktop)

5. “These Scrappy Photos Capture the Action-Packed World Beneath a Bird Feeder” from Audubon Magazine

This photo essay from conservation photographer Carla Rhodes explores the wildlife that takes advantage of the bounty of food waiting under bird feeders . Using remote camera photography , Rhodes gives viewers a unique ground-level perspective and captures moments that make us feel like we’re in conversation with friends in the Hundred Acre Woods. This essay is a great example of how perspective, personality, and chance can all come into play as you explore both an idea and a technique.

25 Ideas for creative photo essays you can make

The possibilities for photo essays are truly endless – from the concepts you explore to the techniques you use and styles you apply.

Choose an idea, hone your unique perspective on it, then start applying the 9 simple steps from above. 

• The life of a plant or animal (your favorite species, a species living in your yard, etc)
• The many shapes of a single species (a tree species, a bird species, etc)
• How a place changes over time
• The various moods of a place
• A conservation issue you care about
• Math in nature
• Urban nature
• Seasonal changes
• Your yard as a space for nature
• Shifting climate and its impacts
• Human impacts on environments
• Elements: Water, wind, fire, earth
• Day in the life (of a person, a place, a stream, a tree…)
• Outdoor recreation (birding, kayaking, hiking, naturalist journaling…)
• Wildlife rehabilitation
• Lunar cycles
• Sunlight and shadows
• Your local watershed
• Coexistence

As you zero in on a photo essay theme, consider two things: what most excites you about an idea, and what about it pushes you out of your comfort zone. The heady mix of joy and challenge will ensure you stick with it. 

Your photo essay is ready for the world! Decide how you’d like to make an impact with your work. You might use one or several of the options below.

1. Share it on your website

Create a gallery or a scrollytelling page on your website. This is a great way to drive traffic to your website where people can peruse your photo essay and the rest of the photography you have.

Putting it on your website and optimizing your images for SEO helps you build organic traffic and potentially be discovered by a broader audience, including photo editors.

2. Create a scrollytelling web page

If you enjoy the experience of immersive visual experiences, consider making one using your essay. And no, you don’t have to be a whiz at code to make it happen.

Shorthand helps you build web pages with scrollytelling techniques that make a big impression on viewers. Their free plan allows you to publish 3 essays or stories.

3. Create a Medium post

If you don’t have a website and want to keep things simple, a post on Medium is a great option.

Though it’s known for being a platform for bloggers, it’s also possible to add images to a post for a simple scroll.

And, because readers can discover and share posts, it’s a good place for your photos to get the attention of people who might not otherwise come across it.

4. Share it on Instagram

Instagram has changed a lot over the last couple of years, but it’s still a place for photographers to share their work thoughtfully.

There are at least 3 great ways to share your photo essay on the platform.

– Create a single post for each image. Add a caption. Publish one post per day until the full essay is on your feed. Share each post via Instagram Stories to bring more attention and interaction to your photo essay.

– Create a carousel post. You can add up 10 photos to a carousel post, so you may need to create two of them for your full photo essay. Or you might create a series of carousel posts using 3-4 images in each.

– Create a Reel featuring your images as a video.  The algorithm heavily favors reels, so turning your photo essay into a video experience can get it out to a larger audience.

I ran a “create a reel” challenge in my membership community. One member created a reel with her still images around a serious conservation issue. It gathered a ton of attention and landed her opportunities to share her message through YouTube and podcast interviews and publishing opportunities. Watch it here.

5. Exhibit it locally

Reach out to local galleries, cafes, pubs, or even the public library to see if they’re interested in hanging your photo essay for display. Many local businesses and organizations happily support the work of local artists.

6. Pitch your photo essay to publications

One of the best ways to reach an audience with your work is to get it published. Find publications that are a great fit for the theme and style of your photo essay, then pitch your essay for consideration. You gain a fantastic opportunity to share your work widely and can earn a paycheck at the same time.

Remember that if you want to get your photo essay published, you may want to hold back from sharing it publicly before you pitch it to publications.

PIN THIS FOR LATER

Jaymi Heimbuch

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23 Photo Essay Ideas and Examples (to Get Your Creative Juices Flowing!)

A Post By: Kevin Landwer-Johan

Looking for inspiration? Our 23 photo essay ideas will take your photography skills to new heights!

A single, strong photograph can convey a lot of information about its subject – but sometimes we have topics that require more than one image to do the job. That’s when it’s time to make a photo essay: a collection of pictures that together tell the bigger story around a chosen theme.

In the following sections, we’ll explore various photo essay ideas and examples that cover a wide range of subjects and purposes. From capturing the growth of your children to documenting local festivals, each idea offers an exciting opportunity to tell a story through your lens, whether you’re a hobbyist or a veteran professional.

So grab your camera, unleash your creativity, and let’s delve into the wonderful world of photo essay examples!

What is a photo essay?

Simply put, a photo essay is a series of carefully selected images woven together to tell a story or convey a message. Think of it as a visual narrative that designed to capture attention and spark emotions.

Now, these images can revolve around a broad theme or focus on a specific storyline. For instance, you might create a photo essay celebrating the joy of companionship by capturing 10 heartwarming pictures of people sharing genuine laughter. On the other hand, you could have a photo essay delving into the everyday lives of fishermen in Wales by following a single fisherman’s journey for a day or even a week.

It’s important to note that photo essays don’t necessarily have to stick to absolute truth. While some documentary photographers prefer to keep it authentic, others may employ techniques like manipulation or staging to create a more artistic impact. So there is room for creativity and interpretation.

Why you should create a photo essay

Photo essays have a way of expressing ideas and stories that words sometimes struggle to capture. They offer a visual narrative that can be incredibly powerful and impactful.

Firstly, photo essays are perfect when you have an idea or a point you want to convey, but you find yourself at a loss for words. Sometimes, emotions and concepts are better conveyed through images rather than paragraphs. So if you’re struggling to articulate a message, you can let your photos do the talking for you.

Second, if you’re interested in subjects that are highly visual, like the mesmerizing forms of architecture within a single city, photo essays are the way to go. Trying to describe the intricate details of a building or the play of light and shadows with words alone can be challenging. But through a series of captivating images, you can immerse your audience in the architecture.

And finally, if you’re aiming to evoke emotions or make a powerful statement, photo essays are outstanding. Images have an incredible ability to shock, inspire, and move people in ways that words often struggle to achieve. So if you want to raise awareness about an environmental issue or ignite a sense of empathy, a compelling series of photographs can have a profound impact.

Photo essay examples and ideas

Looking to create a photo essay but don’t know where to start? Here are some handy essay ideas and examples for inspiration!

1. A day in the life

Your first photo essay idea is simple: Track a life over the course of one day. You might make an essay about someone else’s life. Or the life of a location, such as the sidewalk outside your house. 

The subject matter you choose is up to you. But start in the morning and create a series of images showing your subject over the course of a typical day.

(Alternatively, you can document your subject on a special day, like a birthday, a wedding, or some other celebration.)

2. Capture hands

Portraits focus on a subject’s face – but why not mix it up and make a photo essay that focuses on your subject’s hands?

(You can also focus on a collection of different people’s hands.)

Hands can tell you a lot about a person. And showing them in context is a great way to narrate a story.

3. Follow a sports team for a full season

Sports are all about emotions – both from the passionate players and the dedicated fans. While capturing the intensity of a single game can be exhilarating, imagine the power of telling the complete story of a team throughout an entire season.

For the best results, you’ll need to invest substantial time in sports photography. Choose a team that resonates with you and ensure their games are within a drivable distance. By photographing their highs and lows, celebrations and challenges, you’ll create a compelling photo essay that traces their journey from the first game to the last.

4. A child and their parent

Photographs that catch the interaction between parents and children are special. A parent-child connection is strong and unique, so making powerful images isn’t challenging. You just need to be ready to capture the special moments as they happen. 

You might concentrate on a parent teaching their child. Or the pair playing sports. Or working on a special project.

Use your imagination, and you’ll have a great time with this theme.

5. Tell a local artist’s story 

I’ve always enjoyed photographing artists as they work; studios have a creative vibe, so the energy is already there. Bring your camera into this environment and try to tell the artist’s story!

An artist’s studio offers plenty of opportunities for wonderful photo essays. Think about the most fascinating aspects of the artist’s process. What do they do that makes their art special? Aim to show this in your photos.

Many people appreciate fine art, but they’re often not aware of what happens behind the scenes. So documenting an artist can produce fascinating visual stories.

6. Show a tradesperson’s process

Do you have a plumber coming over to fix your kitchen sink? Is a builder making you a new deck?

Take photos while they work! Tell them what you want to do before you start, and don’t forget to share your photos with them.

They’ll probably appreciate seeing what they do from another perspective. They may even want to use your photos on their company website.

7. Photograph your kids as they grow

There’s something incredibly special about documenting the growth of our little ones. Kids grow up so quickly – before you know it, they’re moving out. Why not capture the beautiful moments along the way by creating a heartwarming photo essay that showcases their growth?

There are various approaches you can take, but one idea is to capture regular photos of your kids standing in front of a distinct point of reference, such as the refrigerator. Over a year or several years, you can gather these images and place them side by side to witness your childrens’ incredible transformations.

8. Cover a local community event

A school fundraiser, a tree-planting day at a park, or a parade; these are are all community events that make for good photo essay ideas.

Think like a photojournalist . What type of images would your editor want? Make sure to capture some wide-angle compositions , some medium shots, and some close-ups.

(Getting in close to show the details can often tell as much of a story as the wider pictures.)

9. Show fresh market life

Markets are great for photography because there’s always plenty of activity and lots of characters. Think of how you can best illustrate the flow of life at the market. What are the vendors doing that’s most interesting? What are the habits of the shoppers?

Look to capture the essence of the place. Try to portray the people who work and shop there.

10. Shoot the same location over time

What location do you visit regularly? Is there a way you can make an interesting photo essay about it?

Consider what you find most attractive and ugly about the place. Look for aspects that change over time. 

Any outdoor location will look different throughout the day. Also think about the changes that occur from season to season. Create an essay that tells the story of the place.

11. Document a local festival

Festivals infuse cities and towns with vibrant energy and unique cultural experiences. Even if your own town doesn’t have notable festivals, chances are a neighboring town does. Explore the magic of these celebrations by documenting a local festival through your lens.

Immerse yourself in the festivities, arriving early and staying late. Capture the colorful displays and the people who make the festival come alive. If the festival spans multiple days, consider focusing on different areas each time you visit to create a diverse and comprehensive photo essay that truly reflects the essence of the event.

12. Photograph a garden through the seasons

It might be your own garden . It could be the neighbor’s. It could even be the garden at your local park.

Think about how the plants change during the course of a year. Capture photos of the most significant visual differences, then present them as a photo essay.

13. Show your local town or city

After spending several years in a particular area, you likely possess an intimate knowledge of your local town or city. Why not utilize that familiarity to create a captivating photo essay that showcases the essence of your community?

Delve into what makes your town special, whether it’s the charming streets, unique landmarks, or the people who shape its character. Dedicate time to capturing the diverse aspects that define your locale. If you’re up for a more extensive project, consider photographing the town over the course of an entire year, capturing the changing seasons and the dynamic spirit of your community.

14. Pick a local cause to highlight

Photo essays can go beyond passive documentation; they can become a part of your activism, too!

So find a cause that matters to you. Tell the story of some aspect of community life that needs improvement. Is there an ongoing issue with litter in your area? How about traffic; is there a problematic intersection?

Document these issues, then make sure to show the photos to people responsible for taking action.

15. Making a meal

Photo essay ideas can be about simple, everyday things – like making a meal or a coffee.

How can you creatively illustrate something that seems so mundane? My guess is that, when you put your mind to it, you can come up with many unique perspectives, all of which will make great stories.

16. Capture the life of a flower

In our fast-paced lives, it’s easy to overlook the beauty that surrounds us. Flowers, with their mesmerizing colors and rapid life cycles, offer a captivating subject for a photo essay. Try to slow down and appreciate the intricate details of a flower’s existence.

With a macro lens in hand, document a single flower or a patch of flowers from their initial shoots to their inevitable wilting and decomposition. Experiment with different angles and perspectives to bring viewers into the enchanting world of the flower. By freezing these fleeting moments, you’ll create a visual narrative that celebrates the cycle of life and the exquisite beauty found in nature’s delicate creations.

17. Religious traditions

Religion is often rich with visual expression in one form or another. So capture it!

Of course, you may need to narrow down your ideas and choose a specific aspect of worship to photograph. Aim to show what people do when they visit a holy place, or how they pray on their own. Illustrate what makes their faith real and what’s special about it.

18. Historic sites

Historic sites are often iconic, and plenty of photographers take a snapshot or two.

But with a photo essay, you can illustrate the site’s history in greater depth.

Look for details of the location that many visitors miss. And use these to build an interesting story.

19. Show the construction of a building

Ever been away from a familiar place for a while only to return and find that things have changed? It happens all the time, especially in areas undergoing constant development. So why not grab your camera and document this transformation?

Here’s the idea: Find a building that’s currently under construction in your area. It could be a towering skyscraper, a modern office complex, or even a small-scale residential project. Whatever catches your eye! Then let the magic of photography unfold.

Make it a habit to take a photo every day or two. Watch as the building gradually takes shape and evolves. Capture the construction workers in action, the cranes reaching for the sky, and the scaffolding supporting the structure.

Once the building is complete, you’ll have a treasure trove of images that chronicle its construction from start to finish!

20. Document the changing skyline of the city

This photo essay example is like the previous one, except it works on a much larger scale. Instead of photographing a single building as it’s built, find a nice vantage point outside your nearest city, then photograph the changing skyline.

To create a remarkable photo essay showcasing the changing skyline, you’ll need to scout out the perfect vantage point. Seek high ground that offers a commanding view of the city, allowing you to frame the skyline against the horizon. Look for spots that give you an unobstructed perspective, whether a rooftop terrace, a hillside park, or even a nearby bridge.

As you set out on your photography expedition, be patient and observant. Cities don’t transform overnight; they change gradually over time. Embrace the passage of days, weeks, and months as you witness the slow evolution unfold.

Pro tip: To capture the essence of this transformation, experiment with various photographic techniques. Play with different angles, framing, and compositions to convey the grandeur and dynamism of the changing skyline. Plus, try shooting during the golden hours of sunrise and sunset , when the soft light bathes the city in a warm glow and accentuates the architectural details.

21. Photograph your pet

If you’re a pet owner, you already have the perfect subject for a photo essay!

All pets , with the possible exception of pet rocks, will provide you with a collection of interesting moments to photograph.

So collect these moments with your camera – then display them as a photo essay showing the nature and character of your pet.

22. Tell the story of a local nature preserve

Ah, the wonders of a local nature preserve! While it may not boast the grandeur of Yosemite National Park, these hidden gems hold their own beauty, just waiting to be discovered and captured through the lens of your camera.

To embark on this type of photo essay adventure, start by exploring all the nooks and crannies of your chosen nature preserve. Wander along its winding trails, keeping an eye out for unique and captivating subjects that convey the essence of the preserve.

As you go along, try to photograph the intricate details of delicate wildflowers, the interplay of light filtering through a dense forest canopy, and the lively activities of birds and other wildlife.

23. Show the same subject from multiple perspectives

It’s possible to create an entire photo essay in a single afternoon – or even in a handful of minutes. If you don’t love the idea of dedicating yourself to days of photographing for a single essay, this is a great option.

Simply find a subject you like, then endeavor to capture 10 unique images that include it. I’d recommend photographing from different angles: up above, down low, from the right and left. You can also try getting experimental with creative techniques, such as intentional camera movement and freelensing. If all goes well, you’ll have a very cool set of images featuring one of your favorite subjects!

By showcasing the same subject from multiple perspectives, you invite viewers on a visual journey. They get to see different facets, textures, and details that they might have overlooked in a single photograph. It adds depth and richness to your photo essay, making it both immersive and dynamic.

Photo essay ideas: final words

Remember: Photo essays are all about communicating a concept or a story through images rather than words. So embrace the process and use images to express yourself!

Whether you choose to follow a sports team through a thrilling season, document the growth of your little ones, or explore the hidden treasures of your local town, each photo essay has its own magic waiting to be unlocked. It’s a chance to explore your creativity and create images in your own style.

So look at the world around you. Grab your gear and venture out into the wild. Embrace the beauty of nature, the energy of a bustling city, or the quiet moments that make life special. Consider what you see every day. What aspects interest you the most? Photograph those things.

You’re bound to end up with some amazing photo essays!

Now over to you:

Do you have any photo essay examples you’re proud of? Do you have any more photo essay ideas? Share your thoughts and images in the comments below!

Read more from our Tips & Tutorials category

Kevin Landwer-Johan is a photographer, photography teacher, and author with over 30 years of experience that he loves to share with others.

Check out his website and his Buy Me a Coffee page .

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The southern gap

In the american south, an oligarchy of planters enriched itself through slavery. pervasive underdevelopment is their legacy.

by Keri Leigh Merritt   + BIO

In 1938, near the end of the Great Depression, the US president Franklin Delano Roosevelt commissioned a ‘Report on the Economic Conditions of the South’, examining the ‘economic unbalance in the nation’ due to the region’s dire poverty. In a speech following the report , Roosevelt deemed the South ‘the nation’s No 1 economic problem’, declaring that its vast levels of inequality had led to persistent underdevelopment.

Although controversial, Roosevelt’s comments were historically accurate. The president’s well-read and highly educated young southern advisors had convinced him that the South’s political problems were partially a result of ‘economic colonialism’ – namely, that the South was used as an extractive economy for the rest of the nation, leaving the region both impoverished and underdeveloped. Plantation slavery had made the planters rich, but it left the South poor.

Unlike the industrialising North and, eventually, the developing and urbanising West, the high stratification and concentrated wealth of the 19th-century South laid the foundations for its 20th-century problems. The region’s richest white people profited wildly from various forms of unfree labour, from slavery and penal servitude to child indenture and debt peonage; they also invested very little in roads, schools, utilities and other forms of infrastructure and development. The combination of great wealth and extreme maldistribution has left people in the South impoverished, underpaid, underserved and undereducated, with the shortest lifespans in all of the United States. Southerners, both Black and white, are less educated and less healthy than other Americans. They are more violent and more likely to die young.

N ow, 86 years after Roosevelt’s report, the South has returned to historically high levels of economic inequality, lagging behind the rest of the US by every measurable standard. The plight of the South is a direct result of its long history of brutal labour exploitation and its elites’ refusal to invest in their communities. They have kept the South in dire poverty, stifled creativity and innovation, and have all but prevented workers from attaining any kind of real power.

With the rapid industrialisation spurred by the Second World War, the South made great economic strides, but never quite caught up with the prosperity of the rest of the US. While the South’s gross domestic product has remained around 90 per cent of the US rate for dozens of years, deindustrialisation of the 1990s devastated rural areas. Since then, hospitals and medical clinics have closed in record numbers, and deaths of despair (those from alcohol, drugs or suicide) have skyrocketed, as has substance abuse. Southerners in general are isolated and lonely, and wealth and power are heavily concentrated: there are a few thousand incredibly wealthy families – almost all of them the direct descendants of the Confederacy’s wealthiest slaveholders – a smaller-than-average middle class, and masses of poor people, working class or not. The South, with few worker protections, prevents its working classes from earning a living wage. It’s virtually impossible to exist on the meagre income of a single, low-wage, 40-hour-a-week job, especially since the US has no social healthcare benefits.

The American South is typically defined as the states of the former Confederacy, stretching north to the Mason-Dixon line separating Maryland from Pennsylvania, and west to Texas and Oklahoma. Today, one-fifth of the South’s counties are marred with the ‘persistent poverty’ designation , meaning they have had poverty rates above 20 per cent for more than 30 years. Four-fifths of all persistently poor counties in the nation are in the states of the former Confederacy. The data is clear that most Southern states continue to be impoverished and politically backwards. Whether measured in terms of development, health or happiness, the region is bad at everything good, and good at everything bad.

The South was portrayed as anti-capitalist: enslavers had to be dragged into modernity against their wills

The recent popularity in liberal circles of the New History of Capitalism (NHC) to explain the region’s exceptionalism has slowed in recent years. The NHC emerged in the 2000s and 2010s, as one historian wrote , by claiming ‘slavery as integral, rather than oppositional, to capitalism.’ It seems likely that during the post-Cold War triumph of capitalism, a subset of historians began trying to tie much of the past to the term – with the most extreme instance being the insistence that slavery was the key to American capitalism. While the NHC scholars rarely define terms like ‘capitalism’, the problems with their theories are more than academic. Unfortunately, presenting enslavers as cunning, profit-driven businessmen not only obscures important features about the past, it also downplays immense regional differences in economic development.

Thinking back over the NHC trends, it is important to note how other scholars, both past and present, have presented the problems of the region, and discuss issues that may have been obscured by a heavy emphasis on business and ‘slavery’s capitalism’. As the economic historian Gavin Wright has pointed out , the NHC’s central claim, echoed in The New York Times ’ Pulitzer Prize-winning ‘1619 Project’ – that slavery was essential for American economic growth – ignored decades of accepted historiographical work on capitalism and slavery. It also contradicted nearly everything economists have argued regarding slavery’s impact on the South’s (under)development.

Beginning in the 1960s, many historians classified the South, from the days of slavery until the Second World War, as distinctively precapitalist in significant ways. They saw the region as having a type of ‘merchant’ or ‘agrarian’ capitalism, and never considered the states of the Old Confederacy as shrewdly ‘capitalist’ (the term itself without any modifiers). Primarily due to the absence of a free labour society, but also because of the lack of infrastructure and development within the region – a place with few cities, little industrialisation, and few social services – the South was often portrayed as distinctly anti-capitalist: enslavers had to be dragged into modernity against their wills.

After the Second World War industrialisation boom ushered the South into a more fully capitalist society, it essentially became a colonial economy to the North, as it courted investment and corporations from the capital-rich Northeastern US. Existing in a dependency-type of relationship, it was never really the South – or southern labour, no matter how unfree or brutalised – driving the US economy.

Finally, contrary to the position that American slavery represents the key or essence of capitalism, the most recent scholarship regarding economic analysis of slavery argues that the institution was not economically efficient. All these points highlight the need for studies on growth, and more importantly, on underdevelopment. Slavery made the planters very rich, but it made the South very poor. In the 19th century, capitalism, even industrial capitalism, did not bring the South to the developmental standards of the rest of the nation. The question remains: why is that so?

I f we turn from looking at planters to studying labour, we see that elite capture of the state is bad for democracy and worse for development. It also helps us distinguish between growth and development, highlighting the unevenness of both in different areas of the US. The US is a large country and awareness of the difference between growth and development can help us see that perhaps it makes more sense to compare the American South with places in the Global South rather than the American North or West.

To begin with, southern militias proved an effective imperial military tool during the brutal process of Indian Removal, which lasted into the 20th century. The white colonialist push westward robbed Native Americans of the greatest wealth the region has: land. That land eventually became the richest white people’s main source of power, owned by the few and guarded like a religion. Elite white southerners were obsessed with intermarriage and have kept their fortunes intact for generations. While they hoarded riches and resources for themselves, they neglected to invest in the communities in which they lived. With few improvements in technology and development, the South’s dependence on slavery enriched enslavers and their descendants, but it left the rest of the region, both people and resources, deeply and cyclically impoverished.

Americans think of the US as having been at a crossroads in 1860, between slavery and freedom, but that impasse was more than just political and ideological: it was also economic. While the North had made fantastic gains over the previous decades by investing in its people, from education to infrastructure, the South lagged far behind. The wealthy enslavers refused to invest in the poor and middling-class whites surrounding them, finding no compelling reason to put money into communities they would move away from as soon as the western spread of slavery beckoned. In terms of development, whether infrastructure, education, healthcare or wealth distribution, the South remained woefully underdeveloped in comparison with the rest of the country.

The Deep South instead functioned more like an oligarchy or aristocracy

With one-third of the nation’s population in 1860, the South was responsible for only 10 per cent of US manufacturing output, and possessed only 10 per cent of the nation’s manufacturing labour force and 11 per cent of its manufacturing capital. Its transportation system, best described as like a ‘conveyor-belt’, transported goods effectively but did little for people. The northern and even western US had been investing in building schools and providing free public education, but the cotton South left its people to fend for themselves: education was reserved for the rich. The North built hospitals, asylums and places for the invalid and indigent; the South built jails and prisons.

Far from a democratic region, the Deep South instead functioned more like an oligarchy or aristocracy. As W E B Du Bois wrote in 1935: ‘Even among the 2 million slaveholders, an oligarchy of 8,000 really ruled the South.’ The wealthiest slaveholders wielded immense and pervasive power as lawmakers, law-enforcers, judges and even jury members. They dominated the region’s politics and devised multiple ways to disenfranchise their poorer fellow countrymen. The oligarchic structure of the 19th-century South meant that the men who controlled government also controlled everything else in society, from rental properties and bank loans to arrest warrants and vigilante violence.

In fact, the enormous cost of the South’s implementation of its various forms of unfree labour still haven’t been adequately calculated. The ubiquitous, police-state-like criminal justice system, complete with slave patrols and night riders, the overseers and slave-drivers and catchers and other middlemen who had to be hired to keep people working – none of that has truly been accounted for yet. Recently, the economists Richard Hornbeck and Trevon Logan challenged decades of accepted scholarship concerning the cost-effectiveness of slavery, arguing that slavery was inefficient when ‘including costs incurred by enslaved people themselves’. Under this view, emancipation produced major economic gains.

The first years of Reconstruction brought immense changes to the South: a free labour economy threatened to change the entire social order as Black politicians courted poor white voters for a cross-racial, class-based coalition. For the first time, the region experienced democratic elections, open to all men, Black and white. The new state legislators established a system of public education. They began funding public works and infrastructure. They started developing the region.

Despite these transformations, former slaveholding families remained rich – and powerful – because they held a near-monopoly of the only real capital left in the war-torn South: land. The leaders of the Confederate insurrection were never held accountable for treason, and the same few wealthy white families who ruled the slave South remained entrenched in power even after the war. Their enduring place at the top of Southern society helped give rise to the ‘continuity thesis’, in which some scholars argue that, despite the Civil War and Reconstruction, little changed in the US South. In many rural areas, even today, their heirs still lord over their little locales. The South’s ruling elite eventually regained complete control of the region, disenfranchising the masses, terrorising the leaders and the intellectuals and the brave, and undergirding this shadow world of unfreedoms with the ever-present threat of violence.

T he Southern elite may have, eventually, emerged from Reconstruction back on top of the South, but the region no longer dominated US politics. The US South remained overwhelmingly agricultural well into the 20th century and long after the rest of the country had become more urban. From the vital perspective of social and labour relations, the South’s transition to capitalism must be considered as late by US standards. In the 1940s and ’50s, historians began arguing that the type of capitalism in the South throughout the early 20th century was merchant capitalism (also known as mercantile, or agrarian capitalism), not industrial capitalism. Merchant capitalism is considered the earliest phase in the transition to capitalism; it is more about moving goods to market, and is characterised by the lack of industrialisation, wage labour and commercial finance. A modified version of the merchant capitalism model would be championed several decades later by Eugene Genovese whose southern ‘in but not of’ capitalism theory, replete with semi-feudalistic social relations, appeared in the 1960s and generated great interest and debate, and eventually, in the early 2000s, came under sustained attack by some US historians who emerged following the end of the Cold War.

These scholars, who eventually came to be grouped under the designation ‘the New History of Capitalism’, never truly engaged with the consequences of the fact that the slave South, in a strict sense, cannot be considered capitalist because the enslaved are unfree, forced labourers who cannot sell their labour power. Even if we sidestep the slavery-as-labour issue, vital to Marxist assessments of capitalist society, we must acknowledge that impoverished southern whites also had little to no control over their respective labour power. The power of enslaved labour consistently reduced the demand for workers, lowered their wages, and rendered their bargaining power weak to worthless. Labourers in the South, regardless of race, worked within a world ruled by degrees of freedom. Never a stark dichotomy, freedom emerged from a give-and-take process of political contestation and negotiation with the planter aristocracy. Slavery was simply one form – albeit the harshest – of a range of unfreedom, lasting well into the 20th century.

But these merchant capitalist labour market features were not simply rooted in the racism of southern white culture. Instead, elite white southerners ensured a calculated and well-codified social order, complete with exploitative labour practices, debt peonage, and continuing forms of unfree labour made possible by the burgeoning criminal justice system. To maintain power and thus control of the region, at times the elite chose to forgo higher profits in the short term so that they could keep their labour force under tighter control in the long term. This was certainly the case with industrialisation during slavery, when enslavers could have turned a much higher profit by industrialising but chose not to; they did not want to disturb the fragile hierarchy.

South Carolina – the birthplace of the Confederacy – has the lowest union membership, at 2 per cent

Compared with the rest of the US, with only a brief interruption during early Reconstruction, the South’s lack of labour power, infrastructure and internal development extended well into the 20th century. Between the violence the Ku Klux Klan and other white supremacists, and the lack of opportunities for poor and working-class southerners, by the mid-1870s former slaveholders and their descendants were back in complete control of the South. Due to the absence of land reform, reparations and the failure to punish Confederate leaders or confiscate Confederate property, the labour lords of the antebellum period merely became the landlords of the postbellum period. Their primary source of wealth changed, but they remained in power, controlling everything in the South and reverting to their old ways of undertaxing, underfunding and underdeveloping.

Given these facts, before the popularity of ‘the New History of Capitalism’ 20 years ago, many historians viewed the transition from slavery to capitalism as a long process because, even after emancipation, unfree labour continued to dominate a significant portion of the labour market. Some argued that forms of unfree labour persisted in the South as late as the 1920s and ’30s, and others claimed they lasted until the Second World War. Even when technically free, African American workers generally lacked the labour power necessary to be deemed a proletariat, able to effectively negotiate on a labour market. Due to predatory sharecropping contracts and debt peonage, an extremely punitive criminal justice system, and the added layer of domestic terrorism from white supremacists, the poorest people in the South, both Black and white, still worked in a society in which labour was not entirely free, that is, able to be brought to a labour market.

The South’s shadowland of unfree labour rested entirely on an undemocratic government, also meant to control labour. In the 1880s and ’90s, when Farmers’ Alliances and Populism began mounting a serious political challenge to planter domination, every southern state passed laws limiting the vote. While primarily aimed at disenfranchising Black people, the laws also disenfranchised poor white people, further concentrating each state’s political power in the hands of white elites in plantation districts. It was an effective strategy: in 1880 there were 160,000 union members in the US, and fewer than 6 per cent of them lived in the South. Today, while a record low of just 10 per cent of Americans are union members, the South’s numbers are roughly half of that, with states like South Carolina – the birthplace of the Confederacy – having the lowest union membership in the nation, just over a measly 2 per cent.

During the last third of the 19th century, the value of output rose and capital investment in the US increased tenfold. Meanwhile, most of the Deep South (outside of a few large cities like Atlanta and New Orleans) remained ‘capital starved’ and ‘technologically laggard’, as the region’s elite continued to baulk at infrastructure or other kinds of developmental investment. To secure funding, the states of the former Confederacy needed to court investment from outside the region – first the North and West, later Europe and Asia. Originally, southern politicians chased northern capital by offering them generous tax breaks and other financial incentives. Without a strong tax base or an effective bureaucracy, the region suffered further because most profits were routed out of the South back to northern owners and investors. Taken together, these things meant that, well into the 20th century, the South remained overwhelmingly rural, without a strong system of infrastructure and no good plan for development. In 1900, the country was 40 per cent urban versus the South’s 18 per cent, and 25 per cent of the US labour force was involved in manufacturing versus the South’s 10 per cent. Something had to drastically change.

F ollowing the Great Depression, which hit the rural, already-impoverished South harder than it did the rest of the nation, the New Deal influx of money, federal programmes, jobs and infrastructure helped bring the region fully into the 20th century. Perhaps most importantly, in the 1930s Roosevelt’s New Deal finally broke up the power stranglehold by the big land (plantation) owners. The South was finally able to evolve from an agricultural labour market that had pre-capitalist characteristics, shifting to a much larger industrial workforce during the Second World War. Some $4 billion in federal spending poured into the region, funding military facilities and forever ending the isolated labour market. Since 1940, the South has outperformed the rest of the US in income, job and construction growth, finally reaching about 90 per cent of national per-capita income norms. It has also remained critically behind in multiple important infrastructural and development measurements, from education and transit to poverty levels and healthcare.

Without question, the Second World War changed the South for the better. War industry jobs pulled workers from rural areas, forcing southern farms to finally mechanise. This mechanisation meant the destruction of sharecropping and tenant farming, as well as debt peonage. Workers in the South would finally be paid in wages – in cold, hard cash. And that fact was incredibly freeing.

Outside of extractive industries, the type of industry that came to dominate the South was reliant on intensive, low-wage labour, a striking difference with the rest of the US. ‘A low-wage region in a high-wage country,’ the South industrialised in a way that preserved and reinforced the class and racial status quo, even when corporations were owned by men from outside the region. Instead of being an agent of radical change, southern industrialisation preserved the region’s legacies of low taxes for the wealthy, heavy-handed labour control, and little in the way of governmental oversight or regulation.

Development is, quite simply, an essential part of restorative justice

Even as the South experienced a period of relative prosperity from the Second World War to the 1990s, with development at its peak, it never quite caught up to the rest of the nation. While there were myriad reasons for this remaining gap, historians have attempted to explain them with a type of regional dependency theory. Referring to the old Confederacy as a ‘colonial economy’, they argued that northern-owned corporations controlled southern money and power, extracting resources and exploiting cheap labour, siphoning both profits and tax dollars away from the impoverished region – all while maintaining racist practices. Adding insult to injury was that the southern economy became the domain of men from outside the South, men with no stake in the local communities their decisions ultimately affected (indeed, often devastated).

Whether or not the South was truly a colonial economy, framing it as such highlighted that the region remained impoverished, infrastructurally stunted, and underdeveloped. Even the golden era of the sunbelt South came to a bitter end by the close of the 20th century. Rural developmental problems began as far back as the 1980s, as local banks began shuttering and hospitals closed. Things worsened in the 1990s, as the economic growth the South enjoyed for decades came crashing to a halt when federal trade deals eviscerated manufacturing. The racial tolerance and progress made possible by labour unions and working-class solidarity began to erode; deindustrialisation profoundly changed the region. Never having invested much in public services, state governments continued to slash budgets through the 2000s. This not only stalled new development, it also let much of the states’ infrastructure, education and healthcare plans fall deeply into trouble, perhaps disrepair.

To address the continuing developmental gap in the poorest areas of the US, the country’s staggering levels of inequality must be addressed. Using policy to redistribute property, the South – and the nation – may finally be brought up to the standards of the rest of the developed world. From universal healthcare and a thriving public education sector to functional public transportation and reliable infrastructure, development is, quite simply, an essential part of restorative justice. With deeply progressive taxation coupled with democratic reforms, the right to organise and collectively bargain may be preserved; the right to retire fully funded; the historically racist criminal justice system switched to a Nordic model. Even the poorest rural Americans could lead lives with dignity due to governmental programmes such as a universal basic income (which would immediately lift more than 43 million people out of poverty) and a federal jobs guarantee – a concept derivative of the best aspects of the New Deal.

Today, more than a lifetime after Roosevelt’s declaration of the South as the ‘the nation’s No 1 economic problem’, nothing has changed. The South remains poor, underdeveloped, and lags behind the rest of the country by every measurable standard. It is a moral blight on the nation’s conscience, and far past time to truly lift the region out of poverty, and into the 21st century.

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• Israel-Hamas War

Netanyahu’s Appetite for Confronting U.S. Presidents May Cost Israel This Time

I t was fully expected that Israel would be displeased that the United States abstained on a United Nations resolution calling for a Gaza ceasefire—instead of blocking it with a veto. But Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s reaction was outright ridiculous, as he announced he won’t send his top advisors to Washington for talks about the war. Why did he do that?

Netanyahu has a long history of angering presidents—mostly, although not exclusively, Democrats. After he lectured Bill Clinton in the White House in 1996, the President grumbled to his staff: “Who the f**k does he think he is? Who’s the f**king superpower here?”

While you might think that Israel’s longest serving prime minister would have learned from experience, think about this: He probably has concluded that he always gets away with it. Netanyahu, a self-described expert on the U.S., is taking U.S. support for granted—in the belief that Evangelical Christians and America’s tiny Jewish minority will ensure that Israel is always loved, constantly armed, and repeatedly forgiven for any missteps.

And yet, at this point, after President Joe Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris have said that Israel has been bombing indiscriminately in Gaza, and Biden said the military reaction to the Hamas massacres of October 7 has been “over the top,” Netanyahu still thinks he can take a slap at Biden.

It’s getting pretty clear that Israel’s prime minister is gambling, and he’s putting his chips on Donald Trump. Netanyahu—and the rightwing extremists in his government who want to annex the West Bank, and now would like to rebuild Jewish settlements in Gaza—feel that if Trump is back in the White House, he will again let Israel do whatever it wants. And, in their view, if Republicans can capture the Senate and keep the House, then Israel will really have it made.

That’s a lousy bet. No one can count on Trump to stick to whatever position he’s voicing at the moment. In fact, the former president bears a grudge against Netanyahu for congratulating Biden on his election victory in 2020. Trump harshly criticizes American Jews for voting for Democrats, and in an interview with an Israeli newspaper now says the Gaza war looks bad and tells Netanyahu to finish it fast and focus on peace.

For decades, in Israeli politics, the government wanted to look like it was 100% in lockstep with the U.S.—that beacon of a free country that, since the Yom Kippur War of 1973, has been Israel’s main arms supplier and protector in the world’s diplomatic arenas. Israel was proud to say that it maintained bipartisan support in the U.S., and both its diplomats and the American lobby AIPAC took pains to make friends with both Democrats and Republicans.

But Netanyahu has embraced the hubris of thinking he’ll look strong to his political base if he challenges American presidents and other foreign critics. He and his closest officials have strengthened ties with the Republicans—especially hawkish conservatives who admire what the small Jewish state is able to accomplish in an overwhelmingly Muslim region.

Read More: Israel Must Not Let Netanyahu Reject the Biden Peace Plan

When Israeli leaders perceived that many Democrats were questioning Israeli actions, especially its occupation of the West Bank since 1967, Israel turned a cold shoulder to the progressives. And the American Left, no longer admiring Israel as a liberal and enlightened enclave in the Middle East, made Zionism one of its main targets for condemnation.

As statistics and our own sensibilities show, that has contributed to an upsurge in antisemitism —in the U.S. and worldwide—notably since October 7 and the Israeli invasion of Gaza that followed. Jews in many countries are being harassed or attacked by anti-Semites and anti-Zionists, who are cut from the same cloth, on both the political Left and Right.

Netanyahu’s bull-headed insensitivity is partially to blame. In the U.S., he was turning off liberals long before his current feud with Biden. Recall his 2015 address to Congress, after an invitation extended only by Republicans. His speech called on America to reject Barack Obama’s nuclear deal with Iran. Netanyahu preached, then lost. The support Israel forfeited from Democrats has had lasting impact.

The alliance between Israel and the U.S. is not a force of nature that can be taken for granted. Thirty years ago, we wrote a book aimed at deciphering the secrets of an alliance between a superpower and a tiny country in a far-off strategic region. We outlined factors such as shared democratic values, the importance of the Jewish American community, the strong attachment of Evangelicals to the Holy Land, and memories of the Holocaust.

We also warned that the passage of time and changes in U.S. demography could erode support for Israel. It's happening now, with protests on American campuses against the war in Gaza. Many of the protestors consume a diet of self-selected, sometimes fake news and have little understanding of the complexities of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict. Israel still enjoys widespread support in America, though it’s constantly eroded by the behavior of Netanyahu and the extremists in his cabinet. “It seems that U.S. officials speak politely but firmly to their Israeli counterparts,” former Israeli ambassador to Washington Danny Ayalon told us. “But the Israelis pretend they don’t understand what they’re being told.”

For now, the Israeli government and military officials who were going to fly to Washington this week will stay home. They had been invited by the White House to hear alternatives developed by Pentagon and CIA strategists: ways of crushing the last remnants of Hamas, and hopefully liberating hostages, without a huge attack on Rafah, where over a million Palestinian refugees have gathered.

Netanyahu isn’t really interested in those talks. He explicitly declares that the Israel Defense Forces must enter Rafah, to kill or capture the top Hamas military chiefs. That means he, apparently backed by everyone in his post-October 7 war cabinet, feels it is necessary to restore Israeli deterrence by showing the power of the IDF.

To the Biden Administration and most of the world, that looks like indifference toward the tens of thousands of Gaza civilians who have been killed or wounded, and the hundreds of thousands made homeless.

Biden’s decision to abstain at the U.N. – rather than protect Israel, as usual, with a veto – was a message to Netanyahu that enough is enough. Netanyahu thinks he’s able to slap back, but his petulance reminds us of the satirical Peter Sellers movie of 1959, “The Mouse that Roared,” in which a tiny fictitious country declares war on the U.S. in the hope of receiving reconstruction aid.

That was farce, of course. The reality is that Israel cannot afford to endanger the aid that's already flowing. On top of $3.8 billion in annual direct military assistance, the U.S. has sent more than 400 transport planes and 30 ships carrying 20,000 tons of ammunition, rockets, and other essential military equipment to help Israel prosecute the Gaza war. "Without this re-supply, the Israeli army wouldn't be able to keep fighting beyond another six months," a former Israeli general told us.

Darker days for American-Israeli relations could follow, especially if Netanyahu keeps misjudging the country that’s been Israel’s greatest defender.

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How Bloomfield College’s History As A Predominantly Black Institution Has Impacted Its Students

When walking across the campus of Bloomfield College of Montclair State University, you can find students gathered on the green or inside buildings conversing about various topics. Physically, the campus is small, being that you can get from one side to another in less than ten minutes. There is a student body of 1,299, and there are not many unknown faces Bloomfield students would encounter on the campus. But although Bloomfield College is small, its cultural and historical impact is huge.

In 2008, Bloomfield College was designated a Predominantly Black Institution (PBI). A college can only be designated as a PBI if Black American students make up 40 percent of the students who attend the school, and must meet other criteria as well.

When a college is named a PBI, it is given resources from the government. In 2021, Bloomfield College received over $4.25 million in grants over five years as a PBI to enhance its student’s college experiences. The money is being put towards academic coaching, paid internships, a campus-wide mentoring program and more.

Kayla Blue is a senior biology student and is graduating this spring. She expressed why attending a PBI is important to her.

Kayla Blue, a senior biology student, said that PBIs can give someone perspective on the Black community. Karsten Englander | The Montclarion

“[PBIs] [can] give you a look into the Black community and [can help people] see how we operate,” Blue said.

Dr. Tammy Castro has worked as a biology professor since 2003 at Bloomfield College. During her time as a professor, she has watched many of her students grow up and accomplish amazing things throughout their lives. She said that attending a PBI is what allowed them to accomplish those things.

Dr. Tammy Castro, a biology professor at Bloomfield College said that attending a PBI is what allowed her students to accomplish amazing things. Karsten Englander | The Montclarion

“In the 20-plus years that I’ve been here, I see how different the student’s lives are,” Castro said. “They [have] given their children a different life, [because] their children have access to resources they did not.”

Castro has witnessed firsthand how attending a PBI can motivate students of color. She believes that cutting out certain racial stressors can help Black students have the best college experience possible.

“Removing these stressors is like removing weeds from a garden and allows students to thrive,” Castro said. “[PBIs] remove this whole layer of questions such as, ‘Do I fit in?’ and ‘Do I have to behave a certain way?’”

Ishmael Martinez is the head coach of e-sports at Bloomfield. He enjoys the connected community at the school and playing League of Legends. He enjoys working at a PBI but also discussed his appreciation for the general diversity of the atmosphere.

Ishmael Martinez, the head coach of e-sports at Bloomfield College, discussed his appreciation for the general diversity of the atmosphere at a PBI. Karsten Englander | The Montclarion

“I think that being a predominantly Black institution empowers a lot of the students and faculty here because they feel the inclusivity of the school,” Martinez said. “We have a good mix of students and faculty here.”

Alicia Serrano is a senior studying psychology. She expressed how having a PBI in New Jersey helps promote cultural awareness.

Alicia Serrano, a senior studying psychology, expressed how having a PBI in New Jersey helps promote cultural awareness. Karsten Englander | The Montclarion

“I feel like [PBIs] are really important because sometimes culture kind of gets lost,” Serrano said.”A lot of people don’t know about cultures outside of their own so I think PBIs are really good in making awareness and for getting people to know different cultures.”

Kiera Patterson is the coordinator for special projects and programs at Bloomfield College. She is consistently present on campus and seems to have close bonds with many students. She feels accomplished knowing that Bloomfield is a PBI.

Kiera Patterson, the coordinator for special projects and programs at Bloomfield College, feels accomplished knowing that Bloomfield is a PBI. Karsten Englander | The Montclarion

“We are the only PBI four-year institution in New Jersey, so that’s a nice accomplishment, that’s something we take pride in here at Bloomfield,” Petterson said. “It’s nice for people to be able to come to an institution and see people that look like them.”

Roxanne Gribbin

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Pleasantview DAR announces essay winners

River City Middle School's Faith Harmon is the eighth grade winner of the Pleasantview Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution's American History Essay Contest. From left: Andy Preiss, Mark Harmon, Faith Harmon, Staci Harmon, Nancy Hicks and Janey Ortega. Courtesy photo

Hailey Jenny-Jeanne Farr of River City Middle School is the seventh grade winner of the Pleasantview Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution's American History Essay Contest. From left: Andy Preiss, Trina Caudle, Hailey Jenny-Jeanne Farr and Deb Tierney.

Milli’on Horfelt of Post Falls Middle School is the sixth grade winner of the Pleasantview Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution's American History Essay Contest. From left: Sally Holtz, Milli’on Horfelt, Vicki Horfelt and Mark Mason.

The Pleasantview Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution has announced the winners of the American History essay contest for 2024.

The Pleasantview American History essay contest was open to students in sixth through eighth grades in all accredited schools in the Post Falls area.

The topic of the American History contest this year was:

"On May 14, 1897, John Phillip Sousa played his new march, “The Stars and Stripes Forever.” This song would become the national march of the United States on Dec. 11, 1987. Imagine it is 1897 and you are a newspaper reporter for “The Philadelphia Times.” Your newspaper editor has asked you to write an article about the song being performed that day. Your article needs to tell us about Sousa’s life and the story behind the song. It is the first performance of the song, so make sure your article includes your thoughts about the music and how the audience reacts to what is seen and heard that day."

The entries were judged by grade level. The winners of the contest are:

• Sixth grade — Milli’on Horfelt, Post Falls Middle School

• Seventh grade — Hailey Jenny-Jeanne Farr, River City Middle School

• Eighth grade — Faith Harmon, River City Middle School

Winners earned certificates, bronze medals and monetary awards. Pleasantview Chapter winners will be submitted to the Idaho State Society for consideration in the state and national contests.

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Baltimore's Key Bridge is not the first: A look at other bridge collapse events in US history

Parts of the 1.6-mile, four-lane Francis Scott Key Bridge in Baltimore, Maryland, collapsed into the Patapsco River after it was struck by a large cargo ship Tuesday morning.

Local, state and federal crews responded to the collapse and were searching for six construction workers who were on the bridge when the ship struck. Two people were rescued in the initial hours of the search: one unharmed and the other in "very serious condition," said James Wallace, chief of the Baltimore City Fire Department.

The Dali, the container vessel, was chartered by the major shipping company Maersk and was carrying its cargo, according to a statement from the company. It was slated to arrive early April in Sri Lanka, according to MarineTraffic, a global ship tracking service.

The bridge is not the first to have collapsed in the past 100 years. Here's a look at bridge collapses in recent U.S. history.

Live updates: Baltimore's Key Bridge collapses after ship collision; 2 rescued, search continues

1967: Point Pleasant Bridge in West Virginia

The Point Pleasant Bridge, colloquially known as the Silver Bridge for its aluminum paint, collapsed during heavy rush hour traffic on Dec. 15, 1967.

The 2,200-foot suspension bridge carried U.S. Route 35 and spanned the Ohio River, connecting Point Pleasant, West Virginia, and Gallipolis, Ohio. Forty-six people died in the collapse, and two of those people were never found.

An investigation found the collapse was caused by a failure of one eyebar chain that had been noted in a preliminary report 10 months earlier.

The collapse led to federal regulations on the inspection of bridges and an increased emphasis on bridge safety through the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1968 , which established a National Bridge Inspection Program.

1980: Sunshine Skyway bridge in Florida

In 1980, the Sunshine Skyway bridge collapsed after it was struck by a ship. Thirty-five motorists and bus passengers were killed.

A 1,200-foot chunk of the bridge, which connected St. Petersburg and Bradenton, collapsed after the massive Summit Venture freighter slammed into one of its central support piers.

When a section of the bridge fell into Tampa Bay, it took a truck, seven cars and a Greyhound bus with it.

The Herald-Tribune, part of the USA TODAY Network, reported the crash happened during an intense thunderstorm , with winds reaching 80 mph and heavy rain. Visibility was near zero, according to local historians who made a documentary film about the collapse.

After the collapse, the freighter remained stuck beneath the bridge, with part of the roadway on its bow. Photos from the time show how one motorist was able to stop his car just inches from where the bridge fell into the water.

1993: Big Bayou Canot Bridge in Alabama

On Sept. 22, 1993, barges pushed by a towboat collided with the Big Bayou Canot Bridge near Mobile, Alabama. Just eight minutes later, an Amtrak passenger train derailed from the bridge. Forty-seven people were killed 103 were injured.

The towboat pushing the barge had made a wrong turn on the Mobile River and entered the Big Bayou Canot. In heavy fog, the towboat's pilot, Willie Odom, struck the bridge, which forced the end of the bridge span out of alignment by about 3 feet and kinked the track.

The accident is the deadliest train wreck in Amtrak's history and in Alabama railway history.

2002: 1-40 bridge collapse in Oklahoma

The I-40 bridge, which spanned the Arkansas River just southeast of Webbers Falls, Oklahoma, collapsed on May 26, 2002, after a freight barge struck a pier supporting the bridge.

The captain of the barge's towboat reportedly lost consciousness, and the barge lost control and crashed into the pier support.

A section of the bridge collapsed, and 14 people were killed.

Victims and families settled a lawsuit with the towboat company, Magnolia Marine Transport Co., in May 2003 for an undisclosed amount.

Crews took about two months to rebuild the bridge − the estimate had been six months − and traffic resumed in July 2002.

2007: Mississippi River bridge in Minnesota

The I-35W Mississippi River bridge, also known as Bridge 940, spanned the Mississippi River just downstream from Minneapolis.

At the time, it was the third-busiest bridge in Minnesota, carrying about 140,000 vehicles a day.

It collapsed into the Mississippi River during the evening rush hour on Aug. 1, 2007, killing 13 people and injuring 145.

Several reports had cited problems with the bridge, and in 2005 it was given a rating of "structurally deficient" and possibly in need of replacement, according to the U.S. Department of Transportation. Construction had been taking place on the bridge weeks before, including joint work and replacement of lighting, concrete and guard rails.

According to an investigation by the National Transportation Safety Board, the collapse was probably the result of a design flaw from thin steel gusset plates that helped connect steel beams.

2024: Bridge partially collapses in China

In the early morning of Feb. 22, a part of the bridge over China’s Pearl River in Guangzhou collapsed after a container ship collided with the bridge. Five people died and three were injured.

Four vehicles and one electric motorcycle fell off the bridge after the collision. The dead included a driver of an empty bus, the driver of the motorcycle and three people in trucks that went into the river, according to city officials.

“Improper operations” by the ship’s crew caused the collision, according to officials at the city’s press conference.

The container ship Lianghui 688 collided with the Lixinsha Bridge twice while navigating through the waterway. The city official said the ship hit adjacent bridge piers, leading to the rupture of the bridge deck over the space between the piers.

Based on reports obtained by online news platform Jimu News, the ship measured about 197 feet in length and 59 feet in height and transmitted its final position around 5:29 a.m. on Feb. 22.

Weibing Peng, an expert on bridge construction and collapse incidents from Zhejiang University of Technology analyzed the incident and told Jimu News that the ship first hit one pier on a diagonal course, then swung nearly parallel to the bridge and hit a second pier. The second pier tilted, resulting in the partial collapse of the bridge.

Contributing: Claire Thornton and Dian Zhang, USA TODAY

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The Dali was just starting a 27-day voyage.

The ship had spent two days in Baltimore’s port before setting off.

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By Claire Moses and Jenny Gross

• Published March 26, 2024 Updated March 27, 2024

The Dali was less than 30 minutes into its planned 27-day journey when the ship ran into the Francis Scott Key Bridge on Tuesday.

The ship, which was sailing under the Singaporean flag, was on its way to Sri Lanka and was supposed to arrive there on April 22, according to VesselFinder, a ship tracking website.

The Dali, which is nearly 1,000 feet long, left the Baltimore port around 1 a.m. Eastern on Tuesday. The ship had two pilots onboard, according to a statement by its owners, Grace Ocean Investment. There were 22 crew members on board, the Maritime & Port Authority of Singapore said in a statement. There were no reports of any injuries, Grace Ocean said.

Before heading off on its voyage, the Dali had returned to the United States from Panama on March 19, harboring in New York. It then arrived on Saturday in Baltimore, where it spent two days in the port.

Maersk, the shipping giant, said in a statement on Tuesday that it had chartered the vessel, which was carrying Maersk cargo. No Maersk crew and personnel were onboard, the statement said, adding that the company was monitoring the investigations being carried out by the authorities and by Synergy Group, the company that was operating the vessel.

“We are horrified by what has happened in Baltimore, and our thoughts are with all of those affected,” the Maersk statement said.

The Dali was built in 2015 by the South Korea-based Hyundai Heavy Industries. The following year, the ship was involved in a minor incident when it hit a stone wall at the port of Antwerp . The Dali sustained damage at the time, but no one was injured.

Claire Moses is a reporter for the Express desk in London. More about Claire Moses

Jenny Gross is a reporter for The Times in London covering breaking news and other topics. More about Jenny Gross