Comments on The American West: Post # 9 Snapshots of the Past Reading Print the...

Steve, I'm glad you included personal parallel pro...

2005-11-07T08:11:00.000-08:00

Steve, I'm glad you included personal parallel problems/limitations of photography you experienced when supplementing your Air&Space Museum project. That was interesting.
I commented also in my blog on the Burns brothers. I assumed Sandweiss mistook Ken for Ric; I think it was the lesser-acclaimed Ric who did the West series. It saddens me that the Burns guys were a bit lax on keeping the history "pure," but thankfully they at least made a STAB at presenting the public with something more authentic than Hollywood's more typical complete twistings of western history.
One more point I thought of after reading your blog---I think there is one situation where context isn't particularly important in photography, and that is in the study of material culture. Sometimes the overlooked BACKGROUND of a photograph can eventually prove to be its most valuable part. The photographer didn't plan to include it or even notice it maybe, the sitter was not especially aware of it, but there it is a hundred years later, and we can see "antiques in action" or a landscape before "progress" transformed it.
Since many backgrounds are not planned or designed, they become the unmediated parts of the photograph. Because several classmates have discounted the photograph as a primary source because of its strong shaping by the photographer, I'm just throwing out a little defense of photography here!!!

Steven, you can jump over to my blog to see that D...

2005-11-06T15:03:00.000-08:00

Steven, you can jump over to my blog to see that David and I disagree on the usefulness of photographs as a source. What I failed to mention but should have, and what I thankfully saw you cover, is that a single source absolutely requires greater context. Although I disagree with Dave that questions raised by photos make them too imprecise to work with, I do think that those questions mandate a larger context of additional source material. I would be hardpressed to agree with any historian that argued photos alone had constructive power...but I can see them being an important part of the constructive process, a process shaped by similar mass and popular culture elements. Already looking ahead to next week's reading, I think we will see how the constructive process of photographs was but one force molding white American concepts of Indians.

Your discussion of photographs as primary sources ...

2005-11-06T13:30:00.000-08:00

Your discussion of photographs as primary sources is excellent. I agree that Sandweiss argues that photographs must be considered in context just like other primary sources, but I would argue that it is much more difficult to know the context of a photo than a written document. The photographer's bias is only one element. You also have to know the subject's bias (in the case of a person). Was the picture posed? Why was it taken? etc. etc. etc. There are so many questions that must be answered. There are just too many variables to be able to assess the historical meaning of a photo. The best that can be said is that a photo can serve to illustrate a historian's point of view, but even that use is suspect.