Photojournalism in Europe, 1920-1970

War photography experienced its golden age from the interwar period to the 1970s, particularly in Western Europe. It was driven by the mythical figures of major reporters and magazines and drew on the many technical and technological transformations that marked photography since its invention in the nineteenth century. It was used by totalitarian regimes for a time but has now lost its monopoly over the image as a repository of reality and truth to other media, such as television and the Internet. The genre subsequently found other forms of expression to represent war, which are more artistic and less focused on the event itself than on the emotion it arouses in the audience as seen through the photographer’s gaze.