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Photographs.
We all love to review photographs.
From the very young to the very old.
But for students in a classroom it is very important that we
help center them and look for detail.
Let's take a look at a few of these here.
When analyzing a photograph, we need to direct students towards
the people, objects, actions, and background within a
photograph.
The first one we are looking at here you see three gentlemen.
Nicely dressed to be working in a field.
And it looks as if they are standing in front of a barn.
If we look at the advertisements on the barn, we can see that one
of the advertisements states Schenectady, New York.
So we are starting to get an idea about where the location is.
Also through the advertisements and the clothing we might also
start to get an idea of the time period.
This is actually 1940.
When we move down to the second photograph here, we can see that
this is actually a staged photo.
It is a publicity photo.
In 1940, these three gentleman were placed together to actually
promote the fact that they were cracking down on marijuana being
grown illegally.
In 1937, legislation was passed that made it illegal to grow and
sell marijuana, and this was used as a promotional shot.
But not all photos are that really easy to interpret.
Some photos like this one here.
There is a tremendous amount of detail in this photograph.
Teachers can actually divide this photograph into four
quadrants and have students analyze one quadrant at a time.
Students will be able to pull a tremendous amount of detail from
the single shot if they actually break it up.
Also, photographs can be very emotional.
We can group them together to almost tell a story of a time
period.
This one here, Elmira, New York, World War I, in this photograph
we have a group of people, community members starting to
gather around the first listing of draftees during this time.
And as time went on you could see almost as if the whole
community came out to read the list.
If we look at this in a chorological order, the third
picture here is very emotional where casualties of war and
bodies have returned to Elmira, New York, and if you look
closely the coffins are actually in formation of a cross.
Very, very powerful grouping of documents.
Here we see a group of documents that will show transportation.
We have a group of people exiting a train and boarding a
barge on the Erie Canal.
They are attending a sightseeing trip for the day.
If you look closely, you can see they are dressed in their very,
very best; all of the hats and bonnets.
If we move on, we can see the Eric Canal representing
industry.
In this photo here, a barge is pulled up getting ready to be
loaded with materials and supplies.
Also, we see a team of mules with a young gentleman walking
and leading them.
This is very interesting though, because it also shows a train.
We could have a great discussion about the competition between
the change in transportation for industry.
We move on and we could see over time chronologically the
difference between the Erie Canal and the barge canal.
Here, this photo takes place in 1951.
With the renovation and the changes to the canal, you can
see larger barges were able to transport goods.
This barge was Albany Standard Oil Company of New York.
Now, photographs with people.
Sometimes students quickly flip by them.
They might on the first initial view identify General Grant and
then move on to another photo.
However, we need to encourage students to look at the
individual people and to pursue and persuade them to research.
If we look at this group sitting around General Grant, we can see
that we have Ely Parker sitting here.
He is a Seneca Native American sitting to left of Grant.
Really encourage your students to look that name up.
Very interesting background.
Now our last photo that we have is an interesting one.
We have a group of women sitting with very unique hats.
Students sometimes giggle when they look at this one.
But this photo proves a really important point, that we as
educators and even historians do not always have answers to all
the questions.
And it's important because children while they analyze
these documents and photos, we'll come up with questions
that we won't be able to answer.
What we know about this photograph, it took place, it
was taken in Troy, New York in 1918.
So we know about the time period.
We know the context in which this picture was taken.
We do not specifically know why this group was together, but we
do know they were very patriotic.
They were sitting in front of a flag.
Bring in a photograph and watch your students become natural
historians.