News Photography
Jackson's career as a news photographer began on the streets of New York City where he would provide photographs to many news agencies and magazines throughout the country. Working as a paparazzo, Jackson would stalk his newsworthy subjects throughout the city. The burgeoning use of photography for newspaper stories launched him into this vocation. From his personal journal:
A new field of photography was emerging in 1910; newspapers wanted photographs to replace sketches and drawings for the news events they were going to print. The era of news photography was just beginning and I wanted to become one in the worst way. I never doubted my decision.
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- "A Good Photograph Is Worth Ten Columns Of Copy." -Edward Jackson - 1961
In 1913 Jackson accepted his first foreign freelance assignment and steamed to Panama aboard the Prince August William to photograph the Panama Canal before its official opening in 1914. In 1915 Jackson was invited by his friend Thomas Alva Edison, newly appointed as President of the Naval Reserve Board, to document the inspection of a highly secret United States submarine "E-2" in the Brooklyn Navy yard. The United States had not entered World War I and did not want the warring nations to know about the development of submarine capability. Two weeks later the submarine mysteriously exploded, killing several personnel. Jackson’s forbidden photograph of the damaged submarine appeared in all of the New York papers.
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