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In the "golden age" of photojournalism (1930s - 1950s), some magazines (Picture Post, Paris Match, Life, Sports Illustrated) and newspapers (The Daily Mirror [London], The Daily Graphic [New York]) built their readership and reputations largely on their use of photography, and photographers (Robert Capa, Alfred Eisenstaedt, Margaret Bourke-White, W. Eugene Smith) were among the best-known members of their reporting staffs.
From 1935 - 1942, the Farm Security Administration and its predecessor the Resettlement Administration were part of Franklin Roosevelt's New Deal and were designed to address agricultural problems and rural poverty associated with the Great Depression. A special photographic section of the agency, headed by Roy Stryker, was intended merely to provide public relations for its programs, but instead produced what some consider one of the greatest collections of documentary photographs ever created. (Juliet Gorman, May 2001, History of the Farm Security Administration, Oberlin College Online [1])
World War II also brought about a tremendous increase in the supply and demand for quality photojournalism. In 1947, two years after the war ended, the Magnum Photos photographic agency was founded by four photographers: Robert Capa, Henri Cartier-Bresson, George Rodger, and David Seymour. Magnum differed from other agencies by supporting rather than directing its photographers, and by granting copyright of images to the photographers, rather than the magazines that published them. (Fred Ritchin, 1996, About Magnum, Magnum Photos [1])
Since 1968, Pulitzer Prizes have been awarded for the following categories of photojournalism:
Famous photojournalists
See also: National Geographic magazine, Life magazine