Photojournalism in the 1930s

Photojournalism was changing in dramatic ways during the 1930s. Mass-appeal magazines were proliferating all over the world and being produced faster, less expensively, and with more photographic illustrations than ever before. The picture story, a relatively new concept, was developed by such innovators as Stefan Lorant, editor between 1926 and 1933 of the German periodical Münchner Illustrierte Presse. He and other editors of the time began encouraging photographers to document events with a variety of images that could be edited together to create narrative series. During the same time span, the Leica, a revolutionary German miniature 35mm roll-film camera, enabled photographers to make less formal, more spontaneous images. These small cameras made possible the instantaneous reportage that quickly became popular with magazine readers. In addition, photographers could now make pictures unobtrusively. Seymour, along with his colleagues Henri Cartier-Bresson and Robert Capa, was among those who took to the Leica early and used it effectively.

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