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Photojournalism plays a vital role in defining much of the world for people–what wars, politicians, social ills, disasters and celebrities look like, and, more importantly, what these entities mean for people. Photojournalism solidifies events in people’s memories making them more real than lived experience. Professor Loup Langton, of the University of Miami, views photojournalism as an essential part of the Fourth Estate. His recent book, Photojournalism and Today’s News: Creating Visual Reality, effectively places photojournalism within an institutional and sociological context.

Langton builds upon a model in which news photographs are constructed from multiple influences. Each chapter expands on these various influences–newsroom culture and routines, economic structure of news, ethics, subject–photographer interaction and new media technologies. He presents his model through the voices of the …