by Tom Mangan

Dirck Halstead's Web site is full of the romance of photojournalism -- shooting world - changing news as it happens in distant, exotic lands. And it's full of the reality -- changing technologies, shrinking opportunities for documentary photography, and the stories of daring photojournalists slain in the pursuit of news.

From the very start of his career, Halstead, senior White House photographer for Time magazine, has been on the scene of the biggest stories of the last half-century. Halstead was 17 in the summer of 1954 when Life magazine assigned him to shoot a revolution unfolding in Guatemala. Last fall he was in Cambodia with a New York Times reporter trying to wrangle an interview with Pol Pot.

Along the way he's been to Vietnam to chronicle an American mission gone awry, and later to the White House to cover Nixon through Clinton. His Web site captures a bit of it all -- some pages have pictures he has taken, others the work of his colleagues. It's one of those places you'd like to send all budding photojournalists before they buy their first roll of film: It's a reminder that they have the chance to be there when the biggest stories break, but the site also serves as a warning that they could get killed in the process.

Halstead's site is called The Digital Journalist, reflecting his growing interest in the melding of sound, video, and still photography in the emerging new media era. While professional photographers might pore over his every insight about new video cameras and how sound adds a new dimension to photography, those outside the craft will find more engaging stuff in other segments of the site.

One of these segments is called "Requiem," based on a book devoted to the work of war photographers who never made it back from the war. Halstead offers his own reflections on the shooters he knew and the pictures they took  -- like the one that Robert Capa snapped just minutes before he stepped on the landmine that killed him. Another page tells how Ollie Noonan's helicopter came under attack. He died but his film survived -- the camera had been thrown clear in the crash.

A Final, Heroic Heave?

Nobody knows if Noonan's last act was to give his camera a firm toss in the hope that his film would make it out, but it sounds like the kind of thing I'd expect from most of the photojournalists I've known.

Another equally compelling feature is a photo essay taken by Mary Fisher, a woman with AIDS who wanted to use her pictures as a tribute to the caregivers who lend comfort to the condemned. This woman, a friend of Halstead's, is not a professional photographer, but her pictures nevertheless convey the heroism and tragedy that are the AIDS experience. I couldn't shake the image of two innocent young boys, both HIV-positive, who are not likely to make it to adulthood.

Though Halstead's site celebrates photojournalism, it indicts a news industry that has become so bottom-line driven that the photo essay has become an endangered species -- particularly in the major news magazines. It seems doubtful that any readers would complain that their newspapers and magazines have too many great photos in them -- the fading of the photo essay perfected by Life magazine has been primarily a business decision.

So it's wonderful that Halstead and legions of documentary photographers like him have turned to Web as a medium of expression. But it's a shame they have so few other options.