ABSTRACT
Teddy Roosevelt found an intelligent, witty solution, indeed, foreshadowing the fact that photojournalism was going to be a matter of teamwork, with editors and art directors destined to add an important creative dimension to the photographer's basic camera work. To begin with the first and most important element, it was the advent of the halftone printing block that prompted the transition from pictorial to photographic journalism. On an experimental basis, halftone reproductions were used since 1867 in weekly magazines and since 1880 in daily papers. If the halftone block had made the newspapers accessible to photography around 1890, it was substantial improvements in emulsions and camera design that made photography attractive to the papers. In press archives, one can occasionally find visual evidence of the newly won importance of photojournalism. Photo agencies not only bought pictures from outside sources, they also employed their own staffphotographers, some of whom generated unprecedented in-depth reportages of the political scene.
