Having already decided on a theme for my photo essay assignment, I felt I needed to develop it further with more research and perhaps a shot list. I had decided I would use the theme of tea breaks, planning to shoot different people in different professions on their tea breaks. I had looked at some lovely images of tea cups, biscuits etc on the internet but I thought I needed to know more about the photo essay itself.

I began to research some well known photographers and found a man named W.Eugene Smith. Although he is now deceased he is credited with the title of ‘ the master of the photo essay’ making him a great place to start. I looked at some of his famous photo essays, published in Life magazine. The first, ‘Nurse Midwife’ was made in 1951 and includes images showing the work of an heroic midwife, Maude Callen:

And another in the same year was ‘Spanish Village’ depicting daily life in rural Spain:

‘ Spanish Village’ also contains a very famous image of 3 law enforcers at the time:

I really loved looking at these essays. I love the images and they really made me think. I thought about how different life was back then, how times have changed and I also found myself wondering about the people in the pictures. What they were thinking and who they were. To me this would be the mark of a successful photo essay….if I could make people stop and think about my images I would be very happy. I also think I enjoy W . Eugene Smith’s work as most of his subjects are in fact people as oppose to objects, much more interesting to me. I hope I can produce images even half as good as this one day.