Press photography as we really know it began in the early 1900's, but in reality, the genesis would be 1906-1908 as that is when most newspapers started using photo services or employing their own photographers to compete with bigger papers that had gone to photography. Most early photographs in newspaper archives up to this point were only used for engravings so it had as much to do with newspaper technology allowing for photographs to be printed than it did the photography itself being available. You see snapshots and such right around the turn of the century, but rarely before that as the gelatin used for the photographs would break unless it was glued to a cabinet mount to make it sturdy.
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