The early history of photojournalism consists of a small number of newsworthy incidents of which photographs were taken. Until the halftone printing process became commonly used towards the end of the nineteenth century it was not possible to print photographs and therefore they had to be converted into woodcuts or engravings. To simplify the early examples of photojournalism they can be divided into several categories:

• Catastrophes
   
  The Hamburg Fire (5-8th May 1842) with Daguerreotypes by Carl Ferdinand Stelzner (1805-1894) and Hermann Biow (?-1850) is currently thought to be the first news event captured on a photographic plate. In 1853 George N. Barnard took two photographs of the fires at the Ames and Doolittle mills, Oswego, New York and he went on to record the American Civil War (1861-1865).
   
  There are 1843 Daguerreotypes by an unknown photographer of the floods at the French port of Nantes and in 1864 James Mudd recorded the devastation of the Great Flood when the Dale Dyke Dam burst to the west of Sheffield in Northern England.
• Social upheavals
   
  1848 is called the Year of Revolutions in Europe with two Daguerreotypes of the Chartist meeting on Kennington Common in Britain taken by William Kilburn and others of the street barricades of Paris recorded by M. Thibault.
• The individual in peril
   
  The plight of a single individual is something that the public can sympathize with. One of the earliest such tragedies photographically recorded was at Niagara Falls by Platt D. Babbitt (1823-1879) in July 1853. Joseph Avery clung to a rock for hours before losing his grip and being drowned.
• Extended reports on an event
   
  The photographs by Alois Löcherer (1815-1862) documented the construction of the sixty foot tall bronze statue of Bavaria by Ludwig von Schwanthaler (1802-48). This is the first known example of photo reportage over an extended period.
• Wars
   
  War photography is such a key part of photojournalism that it is discussed at considerable length elsewhere on this website but a few relevant points can be repeated here.
   
  The photographs of Roger Fenton and James Robertson during Crimean War (1854-1856) are amongst the first of any conflict. In America Adrian J. Ebell photographed the refugees from the Indian attacks on the Northern Plains that led to the First Indian War and they were published as copied illustrations for the article 'The Indian Massacres and the War of 1862' that appeared in 'Harper's New Monthly Magazine' (1863).
   
  The large number of photographs taken by the associates of Mathew Brady (1823-1896), Alexander Gardner (1821-1882) and Timothy O’Sullivan (1840-1882) of the American Civil War (1861-1865) are also key works in early photojournalism.

Although catastrophes and war provided some of the most dramatic images photography was being used in other fields of photojournalism because of its ability to provide a social commentary to abuses of the poor.