Family Photo Album Research Articles

Purkinje Cells

‘Purkinje Cells: Sychronising timelines’ is a reflection on correspondences between Scott deLahunta’s memories of growing up between 1958 and 1976 and his father’s, Dr. Alexander de Lahunta’s, ground-breaking research and teaching work in the field of veterinary neurology. Taking as a point of departure a recent interview with his father, in which the senior de Lahunta recounts how he began the journey, the author pieces together additional evidence that includes articles, book chapters and films shot by his father during neurologic examinations. From this material and by referring to pictures his mother systematically collected and organized into family photo albums during these same years, the author reveals inconsistencies and gaps in what can be remembered. In doing so, he contemplates correspondences with his own research and how, through their combined collecting activities, both mother and father made it possible to find new meaning and significance in the leftovers of performance in the broadest sense.

Do dziś odszukane. O ostatnio odkrytych norwidianach

The article collects information on Norwid’s works found in recent years. The most important discoveries include song lyrics [“Blade kwiaty na odłogu...”], two Norwid’s letters to Julia Pusłowska and an original death certificate of the poet. As to the art works, unknown graphics (6 pieces) and one watercolor of rare beauty (Pythia) were revealed at the auctions. Most of these works enriched the collection of the Museion Norwid Foundation. In the university library in Illinois, a copy of Divine Comedy, given by the poet to Numa Łepkowski, was found. Another important item for Norwidology is a family photo album belonging to Maria de Bonneval née Gerlicz acquired for the collection of the Bloch Family Foundation, which included photos of over 70 people whom Norwid knew. The article also informs about fakes and works whose authorship cannot be credibly attributed to Norwid.

Edith Wharton's Lenox

Edith Wharton's Lenox

Decolonizing Family Photographs: Ecological Imaginaries and Nonrepresentational Ethnographies

This article lays out my process of developing an ecological and nonrepresentational approach for conducting an ethnography of family photos as objects of investigation, practices, and sites for the making and remaking of decolonizing stories and histories. It is rooted in a three-part project on family photographs: first, an ongoing project with a three-generation Indigenous family who has a history with Canada’s residential school system; second, revisiting my own family photo albums that include photos of missionary nuns in my family who had worked in Indigenous schools and communities in the 1950s–60s; and third, the development of a politico-ethico-onto-epistemological approach for viewing and analyzing family photos and narratives from and about photographs. The article focuses on the latter two parts of this project. Informed by my reading of Lorraine Code’s “ecological thinking” approach to knowledge making, I bring Code into conversation with Phillip Vannini’s “nonrepresentational ethnographies” combined with new materialist writing on performativity and vitality; selected Indigenous scholars’ writing on ontological multiplicity, knowledge making as relationship, and the making of life worlds; Margaret Somers’s approach to nonrepresentational narratives and ontological narrativity; and Annette Kuhn’s work on analyzing family photographs and cultural memory. I demonstrate this approach through the analysis of one of my family photos. I also reflect on the ethical challenges of attempting to analyze a different kind of family photo, such as photos of residential schooling that are increasingly on display in media, online, and in public venues. I argue for the need to address representational issues of social injustice in nonrepresentational approaches and a recognition that there are sites and times—especially in cases of human rights abuses, violence, or trauma—when nonrepresentational ethnographies and narratives call for strategic negotiation with representation.

The Effectiveness of Making and Collection of Family Albums on Autobiographical memory and Happiness in Elderly

Background and objective: Aging is a sensitive period of human life and attention to the problems and needs of this stage is a social necessity. Among the common problems in this period, insufficiency in their memory performance and lack of happiness due to lack of social activities .Therefore, the aim of current research is to evaluate the effectiveness of making and collection of family albums on autobiographical memory and happiness in elderly. Methods:The current study is a semi-experimental study with pre-test and post-test with group control. The population of study was old employees who are member of Retirement organization of Tehran Municipality during2015-2016. 30 older selected based on the inclusion criteria and they were randomly assigned to the control (n= 15) and experimental group (n=15).The experimental group received techniques of making and collection of family photo albums for 10 session (90 minutes,one session per week). The research instruments were Mini Mental State Examination(M.M.S.E),Oxford Happiness Inventory (OHI) and Autobiography Memory Interview (AMI). For Statistical analysis used analysis of covariance and data was analyzed by SPSS software 23 version. Results: The finding of the covariance analysis indicated that there is a significantly difference in scores of autobiographical memory among older adults in pre and post-test (p<0.001). Also, it was observed significantly difference between scores of happiness among older adults in pre and post-test (p<0.001). Conclusion: Making and collection of family albums have meaningful position effects on autobiographical memory and happiness in elderly. Hence, this method could be considered by psychologist in nursing homes and retirement centers, as a treatment approach to existing therapies. Paper Type:Research Article.

Mediated memory making: The virtual family photograph album

AbstractDomestic photography and the family photograph album hold significance as artefacts “communicating an ideal familial image and reifying the familial bonds, and also preserving a memory of a specific time” (Sarvas and Frohlich, 2011, p. 148). However, today’s practice of domestic photography is generally relocated to social media (Sarvas and Frohlich, 2011). Photographs previously found in the family photograph album are now likely to be located on the screens of phones and tablets.Using a Domestication of Technology framework, this article discusses how families are using Facebook to create, curate, share and archive family memories. It shows how families go through the phases of appropriation, incorporation, objectification and conversion when they adopt Facebook as the family photograph album. The authors also explore ways in which virtual family photograph albums can result in parental tension around domestic tasks of sharing and archiving family memories online, along with the possible implications of creating a potentially embarrassing, unauthorized digital footprint for their children.

Paying Homage

Paying Homage Iris Lee Stoler (bio) Woman at the Cusp of Twilight Daniel Shapiro Dos Madres Press www.dosmadres.com/shop/woman-at-the-cusp-of-twilight-by-daniel-shapiro/ 112 Pages; Print, $17.00 Reading Daniel Shapiro's Woman at the Cusp of Twilight is similar to leafing through someone's family photo album. Most of the subjects are no longer living, and the chronology is mixed up, but the faces (and stories behind them) are inviting and real. This gives pleasure. Shapiro introduces his poetic tribute to his maternal relations with a family tree, which for me, was both positive and negative. I began by scrupulously referring back to it as I read each poem, bookmark at the ready, wanting to orient myself to all the relationships and events in their lives. However, at about one-third of the way through, I decided this method was keeping me from appreciating each poem on its own merits. And there are many merits. This book differs from Shapiro's previous book of poems, The Red Handkerchief (2014), which is lyrical and imagistic and strongly first-person. That book does contain several poetic odes to family members, but the poems dwell mostly on romantic and sexual themes. (One, "Your Name Means 'Forever'," is reminiscent of Cavafy in its elegiac, nostalgic quality.) In this book, Shapiro, as curator of this family portrait, modestly conceals the "I" for the sake of leading the reader into the lives of the characters. The voice is more-or-less evenly divided between omniscient distant narrator and direct address to an individual. The work is nicely varied; there are ten concrete poems (a wine glass, Coney Island parachute, a potato, among others), several dramatic monologues, and one ekphrastic piece ("Abe, Cast in Sepia"). Most poems focus on Shapiro's parents, aunts and uncles; a few on his grandparents; and one (a sad tale of a dead child) invokes his great grandparents. Aging, dreams deferred and eventually renounced (his mother's dance career), sibling issues, marriage, and one unhappy divorce: these are some of his subjects. In "So Much in Love" Shapiro directly addresses his mother about her lost career. He addressed this more successfully in the poem "Dance" in The Red Handkerchief, where his lineation and language fly; here the language and structure are flatter, filled with not-so-interesting details. I found this so in a minority of other poems where he seems to want to give information by "reminding" the recipient of the poem of past events. When this happens, it takes precedence over his usual concern with sight and sound, as in "Max and the Memory of Elke." But now on to all the good stuff. Concrete poetry is so tricky. It can so easily turn to visual kitsch. Shapiro's concrete poems are delightful. "The Cemetery at Torrey Pines," which contains the line that is the title of the book, is a tree-trunk-shaped description of his mother at the grave of her mother. The last line makes subtle reference once again to his mother's aborted dance career: It's the treethat appears to be dancing, rooted butswaying with abandon in the breeze. [End Page 20] "Parachute Jump" attempts perhaps a bit too much, but the unpunctuated, free-floating (pun intended) lines relate perfectly to the subject matter. (Full disclosure: I grew up in Coney Island; partiality is possible here.) Shapiro is excellent in matching his lineation and metrics to his subject matter. The abrupt short lines in "Hannah" appropriately signify the drama, tension and tragedy of the story. "The Peach Tree" is a memory piece which needs to be read out loud to get the benefit of the tempo: That branch jutting over the fenceladen with fruit— but when he looks back, no one's there,only the tangy scent of peacheshangs in the air. "Rhapsody in the Sun (Esther's Dream)" is all about Grandma meeting up with George Gershwin, and appropriately, the language swings: Scintillations. Above the water,pale-green willows hung their long hair down. It's all lovely –until the turn: Because the unbenign presence growing insidecrowded out...

Making digital heritage about people’s life stories

Actively creating new digital heritage content about people’s life histories is part of the democratisation of heritage engagement with the public. The approach of documenting unofficial histories is supported by a growing literature. Unofficial stories contribute new perspectives on the heritage identity of a region. The case study of the ‘Local People’ exhibition, curated by the author in 2013 in the North West of Ireland, is used to discuss the methodology of a digital curatorial process, www.localpeopleireland.com. This article argues that gathering and presenting unofficial histories of individuals' life experiences, can disrupt official narratives of The Troubles and challenge a regional identity based on conflict and division. The making of digital history is analysed as a curatorial process, rather than the ease of use of technology. The methods used included: filmed interviews, new portrait photography and the digitisation of family photograph albums. A virtual exhibition was produced and new digital historical sources were created that transform intangible heritage by crystallising people’s voices and images into ‘tangible’ digital objects. ‘Local People’ utilised Facebook https://www.facebook.com/localpeopleproject/?fref=ts and Vimeo https://vimeo.com/album/2518991. It is argued that the digital space provides a ‘virtual contact zone’ in which diverse, unofficial and personal narratives can be presented together.

The Sound &amp; the Image: An Interview with Filmmaker Natalia Almada

The Sound & the ImageAn Interview with Filmmaker Natalia Almada Tamara Mitchell (bio) and Brittany D. Friesner (bio) Introduction Viewing a documentary by film-maker Natalia Almada often feels like sifting through a stranger’s family photo album while overhearing a whispered conversation about the subjects in the images. Her films are deeply intimate, treating topics such as the loss of a sibling; a young man’s choice between drug trafficking and illegal immigration; the familial and national legacy of a dictator; and daily life during a violent civil conflict. Each of these topics is intensely familiar to the filmmaker. All Water Has a Perfect Memory (2001) is comprised of home videos and interviews with her own family and deals with the process of mourning and remembrance after her two-year-old sister’s accidental drowning. Al Otro Lado (2005) follows a corrido composer who, no longer able to earn money as a fisherman due to economic crisis, must decide between trafficking illegal drugs in his hometown in Sinaloa (the Mexican state where Almada is also from) or crossing to the US to work as an illegal immigrant. El General (2009) tells the story of President Plutarco Elías Calles, Almada’s great-grandfather, through the memories of her grandmother and Mexicans who lived during Calles’s reign. Finally, El Velador (2011) considers the ways in which life persists despite daily violence as Mexico endures a bloody drug war. Click for larger view View full resolution Figure 1. Filmmaker Natalia Almada. Courtesy of Indiana University Cinema. After seeing Almada’s work, it is no surprise to learn that her background is in photography—she received a Masters in Fine Arts in photography from the Rhode Island School of Design. Each image in her films appears deliberately selected and meticulously framed. For instance, in El Velador, featuring Martín—a [End Page 129] night watchman of the Culiacán Cemetery in Sinaloa, who guards the tombs and crypts of some of Mexico’s most notorious narcotics dealers—Almada’s camera often rests on a single image for minutes at a time. Her lens captures a group of workers leveling concrete that will serve as the foundation to a cemetery monument as the anguished wail of a grieving mother, whose son is being buried off camera, pierces the silence of their workday. Her camera sits still as a lona1 gently flaps in the wind, and a widow mops the marble floor of one of the elaborate mausoleums that entombs the body of a dead victim of Mexico’s drug trade. Almada’s choice of the Sinaloa cemetery was a careful and deliberate one. Since 2006, when the war on drugs was declared by the Calderón administration, tens of thousands of people have died violent, drug-trade-related deaths in Mexico, and that trend has not abated since the 2012 election of the PRI’s Enrique Peña Nieto. Almada’s film shows the seemingly innocuous hustle and bustle of the booming cemetery industry in order to obliquely point to the pernicious drug trade that fuels this macabre arm of the economy. In this way, the film is subtle, and, as one New York Times reviewer put it, El Velador “is an unsettlingly quiet, even lyrical film about a world made and unmade by violence” (Scott). One of the most striking elements of Almada’s films is their capacity to undermine the viewer’s expectation of finding an iconography related to a particular topic, such as immigration or drug trafficking. In El Velador, for instance, in lieu of highlighting graphic violence, Almada focalizes individuals going about their lives alongside Mexico’s daily turmoil. In one scene, the camera rests on the dark interior of the cemetery’s guardhouse, framing two dusty buckets as Martín, walking in and out of the frame, prepares for an evening of work. In the background, a newscast sounds from the TV, and the reporter states that there have been 1,100 deaths related to organized crime in the current month, totaling 21,915 violent deaths since the start of Calderón’s presidency. The film refuses to participate in the reproduction of violent spectacles, and...

Art of the Masses: From Kodak Brownie to Instagram

In history of photography, new technological developments often provide a basis for new forms of imagery. These, in turn, are followed by new ways of theorizing the photographic image. For example, the cheapness and ease of use of the Kodak Brownie camera around 1900 gave rise to a massive movement of amateur photography, introduced the snapshot, and established a tradition of family photograph albums. Similarly, around 2010 we saw a rise in popularity of a new kind of image-making, image-sharing, and image-viewing device, which I propose to call the networked camera. This networked camera is a curious hybrid consisting of a smartphone with a built-in camera, wireless internet connection, and online image-sharing platforms and other social media. The availability of such devices have provided the technological basis for the formation of a new sub-genre of amateur photography – the selfie. The selfie continues the tradition of photographic self-portraiture yet at the same time presents us with a radically new type of image that demands equally new ways of analyzing it. Arguments put forward in this article are grounded in the research project Selfiecity (2013-2014) led by Lev Manovich and his research lab Software Studies Initiative. This project was based on a dataset of 3,200 selfies posted to Instagram during one week from five global cities: New York, Moscow, Berlin, Sao Paulo, and Bangkok. Research methods included computational analysis (such as software-driven face recognition and use of custom-made data visualization tools) as well as formal and content analysis of each individual image. The article reveals some of the inherent complexities in understanding the selfie that the methods and findings of Selfiecity have helped to articulate. Seeking for valid methods of theorizing and contextualizing the selfie, the article attempts to combine insights from the perspectives of history of photography and art history, digital humanities, and software studies.

Remembering digitally: new media and the communicating of new memories

Once contained in personal diaries, family photo albums and scrapbooks of small groupings of friends, the private and intimate realms of memories have now made a huge jump into the public domain of...

A Case of Dissociative Amnesia With Dissociative Fugue and Treatment With Psychotherapy.

A Case of Dissociative Amnesia With Dissociative Fugue and Treatment With Psychotherapy.

“Queering the Trans✲ Family Album”

Historian Elspeth H. Brown and photographer Sara Davidmann explore the relationship between the family photograph album, trans☼ history, and queer archives. Describing their queer archival work, they address topics including ethics; intertwined histories of racism, colonialism, and normativity in photography; and the violent erasures of sexual and gender minorities within the conventional family photography album. “Family” photographs, so central to the affective production of trans☼ family, however defined, have not been the site of sustained discussion within queer history. Brown and Davidmann argue that family photography can also be a site of trans☼ family belonging and queer kinship, despite histories of violent erasure. They discuss these issues with reference to two image sets from Davidmann's work: one from her own family of origin (Ken. To be destroyed) and one from her (queer and trans☼) family of choice (the Stephen Whittle family album).

Digitizing the Fitzgerald Family at the University of South Carolina

Digitizing the Fitzgerald Family at the University of South Carolina

Narrar – mostrar – ver: Como analisar um álbum de fotos de família em conexão com uma entrevista narrativa.

Family photo albums are places where memories are created and fixed (Chalfen, 1987). They consist mainly of photographs and other kind of visual material (postcards, tickets, etc.), as well as more or less extensive captions and comments. Traditionally, the pictures are organized in a booklet, that is in a sequential order which implicitly is based on a pictorial as well as narrative structure of presenting and creating a ‘family frame’ (Hirsch, 1997/2002). How a specific image of ‘family’ emerges, grounded in experience and conventions, when creating and looking at a family photo album? Focusing on this general question, in this article the analysis of a family album is presented. Hereby the methodical way of interpreting a pictorial self-presentation will be made visible. The results of this analysis are combined and contextualized by a biographic-narrative interview.

Exploring subject positions and multiple temporalities through an Iranian migrant mother's family photograph albums

In this article, I draw on a research study of one Iranian migrant mother's generation of selves through her material configuration of her personal photograph albums and through our verbal reading of her photographs. The research engages in a visual-material feminist ethnographic approach, and is informed by the work of Gillian Rose and the understanding that family photographs are a means by which women negotiate subject positions. In this article, I discuss an unexpected finding of my research, the significance of multiple temporalities in a migrant mother's production of selves. The photo album practices of the participant mother of this study, ‘Parvin’, depart from the common social convention of mothers arranging their photograph albums to chart family growth following the model of milestones occurring over linear developmental time. Parvin does not limit herself to linear developmental time, but rather she mixes up photographs in her post-migration family albums to generate multiple temporalities woven together by an enveloping ‘mixed’ time. Drawing on both Julia Kristeva and Homi Bhaba's theories of temporality and the subject, I suggest that Parvin produces subject positions for self and family through a continual interweaving of a multitude of pasts into the present and through a subsuming of milestones within cyclical family time. Further, I suggest that through her generation of multiple temporalities, Parvin produces the subject position of ‘accommodating mother’. Finally, I highlight the potential afforded by considering the temporal and the spatial together in studies of migrant identity.

Looking at the family photo album: a resumed theoretical discussion of why and how

Having been the most widespread practice of photography since the late 19th century, it is only in the recent few decades that family photography has come into focus of academic attention. Scholars working with family albums have mainly come from anthropology, whereas scholars from the aesthetical fields, art history, photography studies, and cultural studies have been more hesitant about how to approach such a material. Using three family photo albums from the late 1960s and onwards as examples, the goal of this paper is to underline that family photos contain emotional, psychological, and affective qualities that reach further than the individual owner and that should be put forward, also within the fields of aesthetics and humanities. Family photo albums are about social and emotional communication, they can be interpreted as ways of understanding and coming to terms with life, and at the same time they document more sociological aspects of daily lives, that we do not have access to from other historical sources. The paper suggests a theoretical framing as a combination of now “classical” photography theory and more recent cultural theory in order to highlight the possible interpretative findings in an analysis of family photography drawing on cultural theory, social-cultural anthropology, material culture studies, affect theory, and phenomenology.

Les mythologies individuelles: récit de soi et photographie au 20e siècle par Magali Nachtergael

Reviews 239 Nachtergael, Magali. Les mythologies individuelles: récit de soi et photographie au 20e siècle. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2012. ISBN 978-90-420-3483-9. Pp. 292. 58 a. At the intersection of literature and the visual arts, this book examines hybrid forms of self-representation that have emerged since the invention of photography. The first chapter, “La révolution photographique,” reinvigorates the familiar story of photography’s transformation of the field of representation by connecting two very different fin-de-siècle works. Rodenbach’s Bruges-la-Morte (1892), a novel illustrated with photographs, and Mallarmé’s experiment with the visual form of the poem Un coup de dés jamais n’abolira le hasard (1897) both exploit the possibilities of technical modernity to construct the space of the page as a fragmented visual theater. They thus set the stage for avant-garde experimentation with modes of textual and visual interaction that displace the poetic subject while foregrounding the poet-artist’s everyday environment (Apollinaire, Cendrars, Cubist collage, Dadaist photomontage). Chapter 2, “L’autobiographie de la modernité,” analyzes Breton’s Nadja (1928) as a new form of autobiography that borrows from the popular genres of illustrated magazines and ciné-romans. By studying Breton’s modifications for the 1963 edition (notably the addition of four photographs), Nachtergael connects Breton’s retrospective self-mythologizing to postwar practices of personal mythography. The book’s third chapter,“Mythologies de l’intime” examines the narrative models of the photoessay and the roman-photo, which appear in the postwar period both as popular, mass-media forms and as a site of literary and artistic experimentation (examples include Robbe-Grillet’s interest in the roman-photo, the photo-textual narratives of Duane Michals, and the photomontages of Richard Hamilton). Chapter 4,“Esthétique de l’instant,” traces Barthes’s trajectory from the cultural critic of Mythologies (1957) to the self-mythographer of Roland Barthes par Roland Barthes (1975) and La chambre claire (1980), who develops a fragmentary aesthetics of the self based on the biographical detail (biographème). The culminating chapter,“Naissance des mythologies individuelles,”investigates the emergence in the 1960s and 1970s of a new set of mixedmedia autobiographical practices by visual artists such as Christian Boltanski, Jean Le Gac, and Annette Messager. Extended analyses of Boltanski’s combinations of fiction and self-documentation, and of Sophie Calle’s staging and ritualization of life events, are followed by a survey of the contemporary proliferation of mythologizing autobiographies . Nachtergael’s book combines a broad historical sweep with close attention to key figures. Its genealogy is inspired by the paradoxical concept of “mythologies individuelles,” first proposed by the curator Harald Szeemann in the context of the 1972 Documenta exhibition in Kassel (11–12). In artistic practice, individualized ‘petites mythologies’replace collective narratives via complex forms of fragmentation and recomposition.In popular culture,semi-imaginary construction of personal identity occurs first in the family photo album and today in dematerialized online forms of narrative and visual representation. The book’s introduction and conclusion perhaps focus too heavily on demystification, privileging Baudelairean suspicion of the photographic image (or Debord’s critique of the spectacle) over Barthes’s sense of the photograph’s indexical and emotional force. Unfortunately, the book itself does not include photographic reproductions to illustrate the detailed analyses of visual works. Nevertheless, this is an engaging and truly interdisciplinary study that offers compelling insights and thought-provoking connections. University of Chicago Alison James Thompson, C.W. French Romantic Travel Writing: Chateaubriand to Nerval. Oxford: Oxford UP, 2012. ISBN 978-0-19-923354-0. Pp. 472. £64. At the beginning of his study, Thompson wonders why well-known French authors embraced the Romantic travelogue during the first half of the nineteenth century, while their foreign counterparts in England and Germany did not do so to a similar extent. The author finds a response to his question in the “emergence of a distinctive Romantic travelogue that was born with Chateaubriand and Staël, died soon after Nerval in the 1850s, and is characterized in part by a novelistic impulse”(3). The author restricts his study to finished books in prose that were published by major authors, thereby concentrating...

Family Photo Album in Twisted Memories: Anne Enright’s The Gathering

Family Photo Album in Twisted Memories: Anne Enright’s The Gathering

Historicizing the Visual

Historicizing the Visual Jennifer Evans A colleague and I have a running joke. Whenever we correspond about our research, we preface our conversation with feigned criticism of each other’s choice and reading of the sources, suggesting they are ill suited to serious historical analysis. While this might come off as puerile and silly—and, certainly, at times it is—it stems from a very real sense of frustration with the limited range of ways we historians, at times, select and treat our evidence. My purpose in the short space I have here is not to throw down the gauntlet and challenge us all, collectively, to do better. Nor do I wish to give the impression that all is lost. Instead, drawing on some of the issues I have been thinking about these past months in relation to my own work with visual culture, specifically photography, my goal is to prod convention and suggest a few new paths worth navigating as this journal embarks on its new course. In 2006, contributors to the H-German listserv weighed in on the meaning of the visual turn for German history. If there was one point of consensus, it was that we historians tend to read visual evidence literally, flatly, as illustrative and not constitutive of distinct if complex historical sentiments, memories, and ways of being in the world at particular moments in time. Reasons for this vary widely, from the positivist origins of the discipline and the preference for text over image, to continued antipathy in some corners of the field towards the cultural turn. Some six years later we continue to see that while all sources are challenging, requiring expert care and precision of thought, visual sources remain especially tricky. Need they be so difficult to work with? Instead of lingering over why it is we struggle with visual sources, instead let me suggest a few ways we might consider using them to deepen our historical analyses. With considerable work of late drawing on painting and mixed media, film and television, dress design, architectural plans, advertising campaigns, erotica, family photo albums, and poster art, there is no doubt that historians have taken the visual turn. Photography has made an especially indelible impact on us and we happily incorporate images into our books and articles to illustrate the complexity of our arguments. Yet ask any historian, and we’ll freely admit a wary discomfort with how to analyze them as sources. Can a single photo encapsulate the spirit of an age? How representative are images if they are inherently subjective? Art historians, photography [End Page 485] theorists, and media studies people appear to have had different concerns. Since the 1970s, when photography slowly gained acceptance as a fine art, they debated whether the medium fundamentally changed, altered, or simply displaced more long-standing ways of perceiving and engaging with the natural world. They argued over methodology; whether semiotic, psychoanalytic, or materialist approaches were best suited to the medium; and in heated exchanges in newly established journals like October they hashed out the foundations of their field. Among visual sources, at least according to Roland Barthes, photography is unique. It lulls us into thinking its primary purpose and function is to showcase life as it happened (wie es eigentlich gewesen ist).1 Shrouded from view are the ways in which a photo’s actual qualities, strategies, and features render meaning intelligible to us in the first place. Although they often obfuscate the technology of making meaning under the cover of realism, photographs are active sources, disciplining the eye to see certain things more plainly at distinct moments in time. One need only think of the role of forensic, medical, and anthropological photography in making racial difference, deviance, and moral superiority visible in the nineteenth century. But their power is not merely scopic. They draw on our other senses and emotions through a series of cues that originate both within and outside the frame, intricate codes that resonate with viewers, “prick” their sensibility (again, echoing Barthes), and help forge a sense of what it all means. If meaning is contingent on the image’s resonance with a viewer’s subjectivity, then it matters who...