CONTACT/S THE ART OF PHOTOJOURNALISM

Structural forerunner to both the photo essay and the television news segment which succeeded it, contact sheets, like the ones shown here, encourage a meditation on what will be lost without them. More than an editor’s tool, a presentation of sequential frames, they are in fact a cinema, a behind-the-scenes glimpse of unfolding events and a record of the photographer’s mental process. Some record a wandering eye; others an eye “zeroing in.” Some are fluid in narrative, others — owing to the photographer’s alternating use of several cameras—disjointed. Most are black and white, some color. But whether shot in 35mm, medium, or panoramic format, all offer an increasingly rare commodity: unvarnished, unmanipulated, and unrepeatable truth.

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