Towards Photojournalism, published by 5 Continents Editions in 2007, examines photography of events and social life between 1848 and 1919 through works from the Musée d’Orsay collection. Rather than treating photojournalism as a fully formed modern practice, the book considers the historical images, subjects, and circumstances that helped move photography toward public witness and reportage.

Its scope is deliberately varied. Scenes of Saint-Étienne miners photographed by Félix Thiollier stand alongside Thibault’s record of the 1848 barricades, Charles Nègre’s photographs of the Asile impérial de Vincennes, and Désiré Charnay’s work in Madagascar. Together, these examples place social conditions, political upheaval, institutions, labour, and distant geographies within the same photographic history. The named photographers represent only part of the book’s broader selection, while Françoise Heilbrun and Joëlle Bolloch are credited as authors, giving the volume a clearly curatorial and interpretive dimension.

For a serious collector, the book’s value lies in this historical framing. It does not reduce early documentary photography to a line of celebrated individual careers; instead, it presents a field of practices shaped by circumstance, audience, and the changing uses of the medium. The juxtaposition of intimate social observation with records of conflict, institutional life, and colonial travel makes the transition suggested by the title open to examination rather than simple declaration.

The 2007 English edition is a compact 96-page softcover measuring 16 × 16 cm. Its modest format suits a book whose strength is concentration: a focused account of photography at the point where description, evidence, and public significance increasingly converged.