The Photo Essay
The photo essay is a series of story-telling photographs about a single topic. Photo essays helped make the big, weekly picture magazines such a Life and Look the popular publications they were during the 1930's through the 1960's, when photojournalists recorded many of the important and memorable events of the time within their pages.
W. Eugene Smith, who worked for Life was known as "the master of the photographic essay." David Douglas Duncan, another Life photographer is probably best known for his photo essay about the Marines at Khe Sanh, Vietnam that was published as the book I PROTEST! And the short presidency of John F. Kennedy was made memorable through the
photography of Kennedy's in-house photographer, Cecil Stoughton.
Though sometimes done in color, the classic photo essay was usually done in gritty black and white. Color, at the time, required larger format transparencies but the Leica and the 35mm single lens reflex (SLR) cameras that followed, allowed the photo essayist to work quickly, adding an element of spontaneity into his work.
Photo essays are still done today, though there are no longer any vehicles such as Life and Look in which to present them. In broadcast journalism, which was largely responsible for the demise of the weekly picture magazines, video has replaced the still photograph and color has replaced black and white.
Having had the experience of doing it in Vietnam, photojournalism is what I wanted to do when I came home. But by the time I returned in 1972, the picture magazines and the classic photo essay were on there way out, and I turned to shooting stock photos.
Here, for the first time, I have published a photo essay from that era. You'll see it listed on the menu at the left or you can reach it by clicking here. I hope you enjoy it and that it shows you something new, though where the photos were taken, now Ho Chi Minh City, is so different today.