Session Abstract

How can we historians in this hypervisual age incorporate photographs rigorously into our research, writing, and teaching? This panel will explore some connections between photography and history, offering methodological approaches to historicizing imagery. Among the questions that will be raised are: How have historians employed photographs in their work? What sorts of histories can be constructed with photographs? Do photographs tell us things about the past that are different from written texts, and how do these two forms of expression interact? What can historians offer to the analysis of photographs that is somehow different from that offered by art history or cultural studies? To what degree can the methodologies developed for photography be applied to more modern forms of technical images such as film, video, and digitalization?

The panel is oriented toward raising questions and provoking audience participation through profusely-illustrated presentations that offer images around which to interact. With that end in sight, it will consist of two 30-minute methodological presentations about the variety of ways in which photographs can be employed with rigor in the historical endeavor, beyond their use to which we are accustomed as mere illustrations of written texts. A 10-minute commentary on the presentations should set the stage for a 50-minute discussion. Although the participants will offer examples from the areas they work upon – Mexico and Brazil – the focus is upon defining methodologies applicable to any geographic area.