At the time, photos were used to mainly enhance the text rather than to act as a medium of information in its own right. However, this began to change with the work of one of the pioneers of photojournalism, John Thomson, in the late 1870s.

In collaboration with the radical journalist Adolphe Smith, he began publishing a monthly magazine, Street Life in London, from 1876 to 1877. The project documented the lives of the street people of London in photographs and text and established social documentary photography as a form of photojournalism.

Instead of the images acting as a supplement to the text, he pioneered the use of printed photographs as the predominant medium for the imparting of information, successfully combining photography with the printed word.

Bobbie