Readers came to expect photographs, and the stories they accompanied became less staid, less philosophical and abstract, and more focused on the immediate, compelling reality of American social problems and the need for social change. By the time of the Great Depression in 1929, photojournalism had achieved both widespread attention and respectability. Hired by the Farm Security Administration, photographers such as Dorothea Lange created social documents that have endured as works of art. It could be said that those were the good old days-for photojournalism if not for the country. Carlebach is not happy with the state of photojournalism, or journalism, today.
Many papers are reluctant to tackle difficult and intractable social issues.
The market for social documentary photography is very limited today. But the news business, like the news itself, has a way of changing, and Carlebach believes the cycle may swing to the left once again. As an undergraduate at Colgate University, he studied French literature and political science. His master's degree, from Florida State University, and his Ph.D., from Brown, are in American Studies. In college he began driving out into the countryside to shoot the landscape.