What follows is a short essay written several years ago for a class on Russian Photojournalism. In revisiting themes of image and the tension between one who captures and subject, I chose to revisit this piece as a way of considering how image is used in urban development narratives. As a tool that captures and shoots, the camera becomes a sort of weapon in narrative.
Photojournalism and the Contemporary Gaze
In 1938, LIFE magazine was a weekly news source two years into its run. With a focus on current events and photojournalism, the publication covered various topics with an emphasis on news that would concern the magazine's readers in America. While reporting on relevant and significant stories, LIFE magazine did not have a clear identity at this time – the articles within the paper were usually disjointed, and the photographs were often generic and descriptive. The concept of the photojournalist and how they related to media production was still developing. While the publication was sometimes unclear on messaging and intent, the production of photographs for LIFE was crafting new ideas for how pictures and news were consumed. The photographer's perspective on the source object reflects a "gaze or viewpoint" that can connect to or intersect with the gaze or view of the institution of the print publication and the reader. This concept is outlined in the essay "The Photograph as an Intersection of Gazes" by Catherine Lutz and Jane Collins. Where this essay explores how the dynamic of intersecting gazes unfolds between Western and non-Western audiences within National Geographic, the development of photographs for LIFE was also critical in understanding the contemporary gaze for Western audiences and how one understands the new relationship between photojournalist and audience (Lutz and Collins, 364). Within the 1938 publication, one article is particularly intriguing regarding this idea of intersecting gazes.
The article was found in the section "The Week's Events," which covered a variety of news stories and photographs that were sourced nationally or globally. Notably, this is separate from the section "the photographic essay," which is reserved for one story and in this print of the paper informs the reader about King Gustaf of Sweden. The article contains several photographs, but most other images are of paintings or illustrations; the article is not what we might consider a "photographic essay" or, more specifically, photojournalism. What is significant here is that all of the articles within LIFE rely on photographs to inform their audience. However, they are not always defined as "photojournalism." "The Week's Events" section represents this disjointed feeling of early LIFE articles, as this part of the publication is more of a catch-all of stories with no apparent organization.
The relevant spread for this analysis is found on page 20 after other articles in this section concerning the Spanish Revolution and "Shirley temple's first trip across America," the latter featured on the front cover. On page 20 of the 1938 LIFE publication, the viewer comes across a spread focusing on one story. On the first page, a single image is shown; on the second, there are more contextualized images and text for the article. The image on the first page shows the figure of a person, presumably a man, standing centrally and shown full body and in frame. Although the photo is black and white, we can see he is wearing a dark suit and a striped tie, which look incredibly classic and professional; however, this is juxtaposed by his light-colored heeled boots and a matching cowboy hat. His outfit is mainly secondary to his pose, which is forward facing, standing, and pointed towards the camera's lens. Presumably, he is aware of the camera lens due to the fact he is pointing something at it. At the camera's angle, it is difficult to determine what exactly he is holding, but it looks almost like a pipe or something else round and small, which is being held in his two hands. He has his hands extended out to face the camera while blocking his face with the hands holding the object. While the figure alone does not offer much to the photograph's context, the objects around him and the editing done to the image add a bit more information for the viewer. The background shows a simple metal bench that sits up against the exterior wall of a building. The building appears to be a storefront or some similar structure due to the signs on the exterior and the closeness of the building to the street. The sign on the building reads "Mc New & Boring Bonds'' and takes up the top part of the image. This positioning, and some later editing of the photo, allows the viewer first to see these words and signs before their eyes travel down to the figure of the man. This relationship with the text on the signs is further emphasized by the editing, which is the addition of an arrow that appears to be drawn onto the image for the news publication. The arrow points from the part of the sign written "McNew" to the figure of the man holding the pipe-like object. This arrow fascinatingly edits the original image, making the seemingly unimportant background sign a purposely present object for labeling the central figure in the image.
The second page of the magazine spread titles the article, "Knoxville Politician Tries to Kill a News Photographer for Taking his Picture." The title is followed by a short article and several other pictures of the photographer, the scene from a different angle, and the politician being arrested after the event. We learn that the politician's name is Ed McNew, confirmed by the original photo labeling him. The photojournalist Howard Jones is also identified as a local news reporter and a known enemy of McNew. The unique part of this article is how the photographer's gaze is portrayed in this story and photograph, partly by necessity, as the story is also about Jones. The viewer is put into the photojournalist's perspective directly, staring down the barrel of a pointed gun. The introductory sentence to the article solidifies this; "On the opposite page you are looking into the muzzle of a revolver at the instant it is being fired at you point-blank" (TIMES, 21). The viewer is not passive to this news; they are experiencing this event as it happened, being brought into the action and terror of being shot at. The fact that this figure is a politician matters less to the emotion this viewpoint creates between the photographer and the reader. Blurring the lens of reality, it also takes a second to recognize this object as a weapon – according to the description above, this object could also be something like a camera. Lutz and Collins describe how these complex gazes and shifts were critical to the Western identity and how news was beginning to be consumed. Additionally, the authors describe an occasional "mirror or camera effect," where these artifacts start to sneak into the photos they were studying, creating a further dynamic of the viewer within the photo to these objects and then the magazine viewer to this scene. In the image of Ed McNew, these two gazes overlap; we are both the viewer in the moment and in the publication months later.
This moment in the photograph in which the camera captures Ed McNew pointing a gun directly at the lens reveals a compelling intersection between the apparatus of photography and the mechanisms of violence. Within this frame, the camera and the gun become visually and symbolically interchangeable. The barrel of the revolver is visually ambiguous, its cylindrical shape echoing the structure of a camera lens, and the figure’s stance mirrors that of a photographer preparing to take a shot. This slippage between tools of capture and tools of threat conjures a critical metaphor: the camera as a weapon. In this image, the photographer’s gaze is returned with equal force, not simply in the metaphorical sense of power dynamics or representation, but as a literal confrontation. The photograph captures the act of being targeted, and by proxy implicates the viewer in that same position. This alignment of the photographic act with a violent gesture—an act of “shooting”—underscores how image-making can inhabit an aggressive, even invasive, role. As Lutz and Collins suggest in their analysis of photographic gazes, the moment of capture is often entangled with a power relation. Here, that entanglement is made frighteningly real. The image not only documents an attempted act of violence, but also renders visible the latent violence embedded in the act of documentation itself.
This photograph and its accompanying article encapsulate the evolving role of the photojournalist in mid-20th century American media, a role that is increasingly entangled with questions of power, authorship, and audience engagement. The image of Ed McNew aiming a gun at the camera collapses the boundary between subject and viewer, transforming the act of witnessing into one of participation. LIFE magazine, still in its formative years, was navigating the tension between sensationalism and reportage, and this spread exemplifies how photography was beginning to construct not just narratives, but visceral experiences. As the camera becomes both a recorder of truth and a provocation, its position within systems of media, politics, and public perception becomes more fraught. The intersection of gazes—between photographer, subject, and reader—reveals the photograph not as a neutral artifact, but as a charged moment where violence, performance, and representation collide. In doing so, it signals the increasing complexity of visual journalism and the cultural conditions that shaped its early forms.