The Artist as Reporter

Abstract

This article examines how the pictorial press during the U.S. Civil War constructed nationalism and national identity to its readers. Illustrated content was studied in the nation's two leading pictorial publications, Frank Leslie's Illustrated Newspaper and Harper's Weekly: A Journal of Civilization. Asking how the war was reported visually, the researcher studied selected issues from these two periodicals to reveal how drawings by artist-reporters used flags and flag iconography to communicate sentiments of nationalism. By focusing on pictorial reporting, the narratives crafted by these early visual journalists presented unique ideological constructs about what it meant to be on the Northern or Southern side of this conflict. Using visual semiotic methods to ascertain both denotative and connotative meanings embedded in pictorial news, this study found that national identity was most often associated with a white, male public with connections to the military and government.