The alliance of signature photography and mainstream press led photography to become the popular image of the 20th century. The magazines that started appearing in the 1920s - such as BIZ in Germany, Vu in France, the Weekly Illustrated and Picture Post in England, and Life in the United States - broke away from the routine of the first illustrated magazines that used photography merely as an accompaniment for text. With these new magazines, photographs became primary vehicles of information. They were spectacular, accessible to all, and a pledge of truth - in appearance, at least. The photographer became a special witness, a star in his more or less specialised field: Weegee in crime reporting, Robert Capa in war reporting and Brassaï in poetic realism. But in the decades following World War II, the photographers became less willing to let the increasingly conformist magazines exercise their authority over their images. The magazines, for example, freely edited their photographs, reframing them or adding captions that altered their meanings. The leading photographers - Robert Capa, Roland Seymour and Cartier-Bresson - started to fight for their photos to be respected and considered as works in their own right, rather than as mere accounts.