Analyzing Photographs from Across A Changing Nation

The Smithsonian American Art Museum produced two videos on photography and photojournalism as part of Welcome Home: A Portrait of East Baltimore, 1975-1980. Each video provides students with a deeper look into the meaning and complexity of photographs. 

A Close-Up Look at Photography with Curator John Jacob

John Jacob is the McEvoy Family Curator for Photography at the SAAM and in A Close-Up Look at Photographs with Curator John Jacob, he discusses photographer decision-making, how to read a photograph, and the value of capturing moments in the lives of everyday people. 

Baltimore in Focus: A Conversation with Photographer Shae McCoy

Elizabeth Dale-Deines of the Smithsonian American Art Museum sits down with Shae McCoy to learn how the West Baltimore photojournalist and author approaches her work in this video entitled Baltimore in Focus: A Conversation with Photographer Shae McCoy. The conversation about visual storytelling and how to approach documenting a community is designed to inform how students can apply these approaches when photographing places. 

The Smithsonian American Art Museum holds 13 surveys in their permanent collection, presented below alphabetically by state. These photographs can also be found on the museum’s website: 

1. Los Angeles, CA 

2. Long Beach, CA 

3. Venice, CA 

4. Atlanta, GA 

5. Lawrence, KS 

6. Louisville, KY 

7. Whitesburg, KY 

8. Galveston, TX 

9. Baltimore, MD 

10. Mars Hill, NC 

11. Buffalo, NY 

12. Seattle, WA 

13. Cheyenne, WY 

In each analysis activity, 6th-12th grade students are challenged to look closely at photographs as source documents and interrogate them in order to discover complexities in an image, its context, or the work of documenting a community. Each activity challenges students to access prior knowledge and apply it in a novel context, then generate questions or identify information gaps, and finally consider how the protocol might be valuable in real world scenarios.  

A sequence of any of these individual activities will provide students opportunity to identify for themselves the value of asking critical questions such as “How has my community changed over time? How has it stayed the same?” and “Whose perspective is represented and whose is missing?”

With its focus on truth and beauty, this activity initiates a conversation about researcher bias while also building media literacy. Consider whether your students might benefit from a refresher on bias in writing in order to reactivate this content knowledge and prepare them to apply that concept to visual texts like photographs. 

After completing one of the Lesson activities, focus students’ attention onto a subset of five photographs and conduct the protocol below. Consider selecting images that represent multiple facets of each community such as work, celebration, home, behind-the-scenes, and local flavor. Exemplar subsets from three different surveys include: 

Provide small groups of students with the Photograph Rhetorical Analysis worksheet and, after each step, bring students back together so that they may share their discoveries and you can check their understanding. 

1. Preview & Warm Up: Working individually or with small groups, look at the Photograph Rhetorical Analysis worksheet to get a sense of how it is laid out and complete three warm-up questions: 

• What makes something true? 
• What makes something beautiful? 
• What tools or strategies might a writer use to influence their readers’ opinions? 

2. Choose and Label: Working in small groups or individually, choose three of the photographs that seem most unlike each other. Label them 1 through 3. 

3. Compare: Working in small groups or individually, compare the photographs to one another, then consider: 

• Arrange the photographs along a scale of the one you like the most to the one you like the least. If working with a small group, decide on a final arrangement by group consensus. What makes a photograph appealing to you? Make notes in the graphic organizer. 
• Arrange the photographs along a scale of most to least beautiful. Why have you ordered them in this way? What do you notice about your sense of beauty? How does it compare with your classmates’? Make notes in the graphic organizer. 
• Arrange the photographs along a scale of most to least true. Why have you ordered them in this way? What do you notice about your sense of truth? How does it compare with your classmates’? Make notes in the graphic organizer. 

4. Reflect: Working individually, reflect on the ideas of beauty and truth. Do you think beauty conceals or reveals truth? Might truth reveal or conceal beauty? Make notes in the graphic organizer. Return to your answers from Step One. Add any new ideas that have come up for you. 

5. Whole Class Synthesis: Why might it be important that we, as readers or historians, are aware of our own preferences? Why might it be important that we are aware of rhetorical strategies? 

Note to Teacher: In preparation for Step Three consider asking students to pause and consider the difference between things that are appealing to them and things they find beautiful. This will help clarify the distinction between Tasks A and B in this step.  

Formative Assessment: Steps Five offers a point of formative assessment. Consider introducing the rhetorical concepts of Ethos (attempts to persuade) and Pathos (attempts to induce emotion). EDSITEment offers a related lesson entitled Introducing the Essay: Twain, Douglass, and American Non-fiction.   

Check their understanding of this content by challenging students to draw connections between these new ideas and those that they have explored with the photographs.  

Summative Assessment: In order to assess students’ understanding of rhetoric, present students with an excerpted article or speech whose topic connects thematically to the photographs they analyzed. Challenge them to first identify beautiful turns of phrase as well as points of truth. Then, invite them to write a short paragraph analyzing the influence of these two components on their response to the text. In a second paragraph, challenge students to describe a 3-5-point process by which they might critically assess other such texts in order to surface the influence of the writer on the reader.  

Looking “beyond the frame” helps students consider a document’s larger context and assess the completeness of the presented narrative. In this activity, students will consider the in/visible social and historical forces at play in a photograph, then consider the perspectives excluded from it. Depending on your curriculum, you might prime students’ thinking about historical and social context by briefly reviewing a timeline of the major events of the 1970s and 80s. 

After completing a Visual Analysis, select one photograph from that set and conduct the protocol below with students focusing on that single photograph. After each step, bring students back together so that they may share their discoveries and you can check their understanding. 

1. Contextualize: Independently read the photograph’s label text, then try to answer the questions below. If you hit a gap in your knowledge, note it down as a research question.  

• Where was the photograph made? Consider not only the state, but also the city, neighborhood, and specific setting or site. 
• When was it made (year, season, time of day, and even occasion)? 
• Who made it? Look beyond the artist’s identity and consider whether s/he worked alone or in collaboration. Who paid for the materials or paid the photographer? 
• Why was this photograph made? Who was the intended audience? 
• What else was going on at this place and time? 

2. Research and Share: Working with a partner, pool your research questions. Which two seem most helpful for understanding the time period (historical context) and the people or surroundings (social context) of this photograph? Conduct an online search, making certain to exercise good sourcing habits, then share what you discovered with your whole class. 

3. Consider Multiple Perspectives: The photographer made this image amongst many others. It captures one moment in time and one set of people and things, thereby narrowing the viewer’s focus to the people and places the artist chose.  

• Whose perspectives are represented in this photograph? Consider the figures, words, and objects captured inside the frame as well as the people or perspectives implied by the composition. 
• What historical events or social issues are relevant but not represented? Who from that time period might have a perspective on one or more of those issues but are absent from the frame?  
• Generate a list of questions you would ask people both present in and absent from this photograph so that you might better understand the complexities of the time. [Note to teacher: This step may lead into the Continuity and Change Over Time activity.] 

4. Express: Of the perspectives or voices that are left out of the photograph, which one do you feel most connected to? What could you do to alter or update this photograph in order to better represent that perspective? Once you’ve redesigned the image, create a "beyond the frame" label text that explains your discoveries, cites sources, and describes your rationale for the update.  

5. Curate: Placing your altered image and new label amongst those of your classmates, look at these as a set. What stories does the set tell that the individual photographs do not? What larger themes emerge? Which images would you group together in order to make those themes more explicit?  

6. Reflect: What are the strengths and limitations of photographs as tools for understanding history? As a historian, why is it important to consider multiple perspectives and missing voices? Why might it be important to hear from multiple perspectives, as an elected official? 

Note to Teacher: Step Four invites students to redesign the photograph. Depending on available resources, this step might involve using digital tools to edit or add to the existing photograph. Alternatively, students might draw a new scene or verbally narrate what a new image might look like. 

Formative Assessment: Steps Two, Three, and Four provide assessment points. Having selected a photographic series from a period of history under examination in your curriculum, listen for students’ application of content knowledge to their assessment of the photograph. If, at this point, they have not shared aloud information previously studied, revisiting that material at this point may be essential. 

Summative Assessment: Step Five provides an assessment point in the form of an exhibition of learning. Consider using a student work product from this step as an activity preview for students in subsequent school years. 

This activity uses a Jigsaw structure, requiring that students have access to a set of oral histories from the same time and place documented in the NEA photographic survey of your choosing. If an NEA survey was not conducted in your area, consider using a survey from a neighboring area or one whose influence you feel in your own area. EDSITEment’s Oral History as an Educational Experience Teacher’s Guide provides resources of accessing oral histories.  Additional resources may be available through your city or county library and the Library of Congress. 

After completing a Visual Analysis on a set of photographs, provide pairs or trios of students with one excerpted oral history from the place and time depicted. Each pair or trio should have a different excerpted oral history. Conduct the protocol below and, after each step, bring students back together so that they may share their discoveries and you can document a growing list of questions. 

1. Read: Oral histories are interviews between a researcher and a person who experienced a historical event or time period deemed important by one or both. Before the 1960s and 70s, oral histories were most frequently conducted with leaders or other prominent figures, leaving gaps in the historical record of the lives of everyday people as well as preserving only particular perspectives for the future. Social movements plus technology motivated historians to begin deliberately documenting the lives of more Americans.  

Working with a partner, read the excerpted oral history. Note whether this interview was conducted in the same place and during the same time depicted in the photographs.  

• What biographical or demographic information for the speaker was provided? 
• When was the oral history taken? By whom? How does this compare with the photographs? 

Read the excerpt of the oral history in order to gather ideas about the speaker’s opinions and life experiences. 

• What big ideas does the speakers reflect upon? Circle or make a list of issues/themes. These might include work, family, community, faith, etc. 
• Which sentence from the oral history best captures your takeaway understanding of this person or their time? Underline it to share with your classmates. 
• What question would you ask this person in order to better understand their experience? 

2. Pair: Speak with a group that read an oral history different from the one that you read. Share the big ideas as well as the phrase or sentence you underlined. 

• What ideas from the oral histories connect with one another? What’s similar?
• What ideas from the oral histories connect with the photographs? 
• What ideas from the oral histories challenge or conflict with one another? What ideas challenge the way you think about that time or place? 
• How might your understanding of the time or place be shaped by the interviewer and/or photographer? 

 3. Share: Speak with the whole group, sharing the connections, challenges and conflicts you uncovered when you compared the oral histories. Discuss the following: 

• What new ideas do you have about the time period or place? Note 2-3 surprises or new ideas.  
• What questions do you have? What do you not yet understand? 

 4. Connect to Today: Discuss with your classmates how the content of these histories is similar to or different from your community today.   

• What issues/themes seem similar to things happening in your community today? What makes them similar? 
• What’s different? Has something changed? What might have caused that change? 
• What questions do you have? What do you not yet understand? 

This section of the extension activity invites students to act as historians by planning, organizing, and facilitating an oral history interview. Challenge students to consider who in their lives today might be able to offer insights or answer their questions. If this is the first time your students have conducted oral histories, consider showing them the video available from the Smithsonian Institution Archives. 

5. List Potential Interviewees: Consider who in your community might have an opinion about the issues/themes that you identified. Make as long a list as you can.  

• Review your list. Whose voice might have been inadvertently left off? Who might you have overlooked? Add those names. 

• Review your list. Do you have multiple generations represented? If not, who might you have overlooked? Add those names. 

• Of all the people on this list, to whom do you have access? Who might you be able to interview?  

6. Conduct an Interview: Using EDSITEment's Oral Histories Teacher's Guide, conduct interviews with two of the people from your list: one elder and one person your age or someone you consider a peer. Ask them about the themes you identified from the original oral histories. 

7. Document: Review your thinking so far in search of issues/themes that arise again and again. Take five photos of your community that document how those issues/themes appear today. Choose one photo that you feel is most representative.  

• Create alt-text, or text that describes your photograph to someone who cannot see it (ex: someone using a screen reader). Consider what features captured in the photo you would want all viewers to be able to “observe” and whether some additional information would help them understand those features. 
• Harvest one quote from the interview with an elder and one quote from your peer to create a two-line label for your photograph. The label should link the past to the present and clearly state the issue/theme depicted by your photograph. If it’s challenging to get started here, look for quotes from your oral histories that sound like parts of a conversation between the two interviewees. 

8. Reflect: Look at your work and that of your classmates, considering these as time capsule to be passed to the future: 

• Which is easier to discover: things that have changed or things that have stayed the same? Why might that be? 
• What new ideas do you have about how information is conveyed across time or between people? 

Notes to Teacher: As written this extension activity will take at least two class periods but they need not be consecutive. Consider how to break this activity into chunks that align with your existing curriculum.  

Oral history excerpts should be short enough to assure basic comprehension within the first reading. If you prefer to use a longer or more complex oral history, consider conducting the reading of that text during the class period BEFORE the one set aside for this extension activity. You may find that students respond best to recorded oral history interviews. 

Formative Assessments: 

• Step Three provides an opportunity to gauge students’ understanding of local history. The questions they formulate at the end of this step might drive a short research project or, alternatively, guide your selection of additional primary source documents for discussion (i.e., maps documenting human migration patterns, etc.).  
• Step Four offers an opportunity to scaffold students’ understanding of how present-day issues have evolved or grown out of issues of the past. Consider collecting conjecture in Task B, then conducting a quick online research project to check those ideas. If this step is difficult, consider offering students a tree diagram. The theme/issue of today might be situated on the trunk of the tree (ex: interdependence of community members, mutual support). The roots might be causes from the past (ex: immigrant neighborhood, small business district, discrimination, etc.). The leaves might be symptoms of that theme/issue (ex: people shopping at small businesses even though prices might be slightly higher). 
• Step Seven provides an opportunity to revisit strategies explored in the “Photographer’s Choices” extended analysis activity found within the Visual Records of a Changing Nation lesson plan.  

Summative Assessment: Step Seven provides an assessment point in the form of an exhibition of learning. Consider submitting your students’ work to a local historical society.

Each person sees the world slightly differently because we each have a unique combination of roles, identities, and lived experiences. We might consider each of these individual parts of ourselves to be individual lenses through which we could see images, issues, or events. 

After completing a Visual Analysis, select one photograph from that set and conduct the protocol below with students focusing on that single photograph. After each step, bring students back together so that they may share their discoveries and you can check their understanding. 

1. Inventory: Working with a partner, make a long list of possible lenses. Consider, for instance: gender, race, relationships to others, sexuality, belief system, and many more.  

2. Try on a lens: Working independently, choose one lens from the list you and your partner created. Examine the photograph again but this time use that metaphorical lens to guide your observations and interpretations. Look at the familiar photograph for something particularly relevant to that issue or idea. For example, you might look at the photograph through the lens of gender and consider how gender is presented within.  

• Through your lens of choice, what things in the photograph seem particularly important to notice? Make a list of at least five things. 
• Through your lens of choice, what message(s) does the image convey?  Write a paragraph that captures your thinking. 

3. Share: Compare your thinking with a classmate’s and be prepared to share your discoveries with the whole class. 

• Partner with a classmate who looked at the photograph through the same lens. What did each of you note as being particularly important in the photograph? How do your synopses of the photograph compare? Why might you see things differently, through the same lens? 
• Partner with a classmate who looked at the photograph through a different lens. What did each of you note as being particularly important in the photograph? How do your synopses of the photograph compare? Why might you see things similarly, through a different lens? 

4. Reflect: Review your documentation from the different types of analysis. Pay particular attention to how and when your thinking about the photograph shifted. 

• How did “trying on a lens” affect your thinking? 
• What are the challenges and opportunities of viewing an image, issue, or event through a single lens? 
• What ideas does this give you about research, writing, or even voting? 

Summative Assessment: Consider assigning the questions in Step Four as writing prompts, giving students an opportunity to consolidate their thinking and build clear, nuanced connections to the real world.