Smith, Verna Mae Edom

The Father of Photojournalism, Clifton Cedric Edom (February 12, 1907-January 30, 1991), taught photojournalism at the University of Missouri at Columbia (MU), 1943-1973. Previous to that position (1935-1943), Edom acted as educational director for the TASOPE School of Photoengraving in Aurora, Mo. Here Edom taught photo engraving, promoted an increase in the use and quality of pictures in small town newspapers, and published the TASOPE News, which became PIX Magazine . After he was hired in 1943 as engraver for the Columbia Missourian, the MU campus newspaper, Edom subsequently was hired to teach news photography. From this platform, Edom, with his wife Vilia Vi (1908-2004), launched the transformation of American news photography education and professional practice through several initiatives.

Edom established the first accredited college degree program in news photography within an American School of Journalism, therefore gaining recognition within the academy that the news photographer was as much a journalist and deserved as quality an education as the print journalist. Edom accomplished this in large part through the integration into his program of the Farm Security Administration’s socially conscious style of documentary photography. In this way Edom advanced photography instruction beyond the technical emphasis and one-shot approach common to press photography to a more sensitive portrayal of the human condition.

In 1944, to achieve greater recognition for news photography and to elevate its quality on a national scale, Edom began the 50-Print Competition, later the famed Pictures of the Year Contest and now Pictures of the Year International. That same year he founded the photojournalism honorary fraternity Kappa Alpha Mu (KAM) to increase awareness of the importance of photojournalism training in colleges and universities. In 1949, with the counsel of Roy Stryker and Vi’s work with the Missouri Press Association, Edom established the Missouri Workshop, an innovative and intensive training for photographers. The Workshop, facilitated by the best professionals and educators of the day, became renown for the prolific social documentation of the people and towns of Missouri and as a model method of training more perceptive and thoughtful photographers. In 1951, Edom, with Stanley Kalish, published Picture Editing, one of the first books aimed at educating editors toward a more intelligent use of pictures in mass media. Edom was also credited, with Dean Frank Luther Mott of the University of Missouri, with coining the term photojournalism to convey an elevated understanding of the photographic image to be as important a means of communication as the printed word.

Vi Edom was a vital influence in Edom’s life and career. Together they were involved in numerous organizations and received many of the most prestigious honors awarded in the fields of photography and photojournalism. These awards included the 1955 Joseph Sprague Award from the National Press Photographers Association (NPPA) and the first Robin F. Garland Educator’s Award from NPPA in 1974. In 1977 Edom received the Medal of Honor for Distinguished Service from MU, and the Missouri government honored him with two separate Congratulatory Resolutions. In 1982 the Photographic Administrators, Inc., in New York City awarded Edom the Education in Photography Award for lifetime dedication to teaching. Two years later he was the recipient of the Progress Award, the highest award given by the Photographic Society of America (PSA).

Edom earned his teaching certificate from Western Illinois State Teachers College (now Western Illinois University-Macomb) in 1925, and earned his bachelor’s from the MU School of Journalism in 1946. He married Vilia C. Vi Patefield on June 30, 1928, in Oswego, IL, and the couple had a daughter, Verna Mae Vme .

Vme Edom, a graduate of the MU School of Journalism, married fellow photojournalist Thomas R. Smith, and the couple had two children, Tony and Teri. She followed in her parents’ footsteps in photography, co-authoring Small Town America: the Missouri Photo Workshops, 1949-1991 with them. Smith also earned a doctorate in sociology from the University of Maryland in 1981, and has hosted in Virginia her own photography-sociology workshop, The Cliff and Vi Edom Truth with a Camera Workshop.

From the guide to the Clifton C. and Vilia C. Edom Collection 2005-249., 1872-2006 (bulk 1932-2006), (Dolph Briscoe Center for American History, The University of Texas at Austin)