Critically Viewing Photographs

  Original URL:  http://ed.sc.gov/agency/offices/cso/standards/ela/CriticallyViewingPhotographs.doc

Time Frame:  1 or 2 class periods

Grade Level:  Grades 5 through 8

Module Overview: Today, images in photography are easily manipulated with the advent of computer imaging software. But could early American photographs be manipulated? Students will use critical viewing skills to examine a Civil War photograph.

 

Text Sets

 

Before beginning the module, the teacher may want to create texts sets to use as a classroom resource that include titles in a variety of genres and reflect the diversity of the students. Text sets should include titles that can be used for read alouds, additional reading, research, or additional enrichment and reading for pleasure. All of the text sets are optional and should be created and expanded upon based on student need and the focus of the module.

 

Books

Image Ethics in the Digital Age—University of Minnesota Press

Underexposed:  Censored Pictures and Hidden History—Jacobson, ed.

Picturing the Past:  Media, History, and Photograph

Phototruth or Photoficition:  Ethics and Media Imagery in the Digital Age—Wheeler

Photo Fakery:  The History and Techniques of Photographic Deception and Manipulation—Brugioni

 

Videos

Is Seeing Believing? How Can You Tell What’s Real? (www.newseum.org)

 

News Articles

“Seeing is No Longer Believing”
http://www.csmonitor.com/2005/0202/p15s02-lire.html
 

“Seeing Isn’t Believing, When Pictures Become Propaganda, History Can Take a Wrong Turn”
—Reader’s Digest, September 2004
http://www.frankwbaker.com/seeing_isnt_believing.pdf
 

“Digital Imaging Zaps Braces, Zits From Yearbook Photos”

 

Websites:

Is Seeing Believing   http://giftshop.newseum.org/detail.asp?ProductID=34

Is Seeing Believing:  http://www.frankwbaker.com/isb.htm  also   http://www.civilwarphotography.com

“The Case of the Moved Body”    http://memory.loc.gov/ammenm/cwphotml/cwpcam/cwcam3.html

 

English Language Arts Standards

 

Communication Goal (C)

The student will recognize, demonstrate, and analyze the qualities of effective communication.

 

Communication: Viewing

C3                               The student will comprehend and analyze information he or she receives from nonprint sources.

 

5, 6, 7, 8-C3.1 Demonstrate the ability to make predictions about the content of what he or she views.

5, 6-C3.3                    Demonstrate the ability to summarize information that he or she receives from nonprint sources.

7, 8-C3.2                    Demonstrate the ability to summarize information that he or she receives from nonprint sources.

5, 6-C3.2                    Demonstrate the ability to analyze details, setting, character, and cause and effect in material from nonprint sources.

7, 8-C3.3                    Demonstrate the ability to analyze details, setting, character, and cause and effect in material from nonprint sources.

5, 6, 7, 8-C3.4 Demonstrate the ability to distinguish between fact and opinion, to compare and contrast information and ideas, and to make inferences with regard to what he or she has viewed.

5, 6, 7, 8-C3.5 Demonstrate the ability to compare and contrast different viewpoints that he or she encounters in nonprint sources.

5, 6, 7, 8-C3.6 Demonstrate the ability to compare and contrast the treatment of a given situation or event in a variety of nonprint sources.

 


 

BIG IDEAS

 

 

 

CULMINATING ASSESSMENT

 

Students will analyze a Civil War photograph using an inquiry method. The students will record their answers on the Student Rubric for Analyzing the Civil War Photograph.

 

One of the key principles of media literacy education is the principle of inquiry, asking questions.

Students gain a deeper appreciation of media by asking questions like the ones suggested here:

 

Questions: 

Answers:

1. who is the producer of the photograph?

 

2. what is the purpose of the photograph?

 

3. what techniques are used to make the photo believable?

 

4. in what ways can a photographer “construct” a photograph?

 

5. what do you already know about the photo? (prior knowledge) What don’t you know? What would you like to know?

 

6. where can you go to find credible answers?

 


 

INSTRUCTION

Building Background

In general, teachers and students need to know that photography was still in its infancy during the 1860s in America. There were no high speed shutters, which today, can “stop” a race car going 150 mph. President Lincoln, for example, had to sit still in a chair in a photographic studio for many minutes at a time, in order for the photographer to open the shutter, expose enough light on his photographic place, and then close the shutter. For this reason alone, there are no photographs of actual Civil War battle action scenes.

 

Suggested website:  http://www.civilwarphotography.com

 

Teachers should log onto the Library of Congress web page and download and read “The Case of the Moved Body” http://memory.loc.gov/ammenm/cwphotml/cwpcam/cwcam3.html.

 

What is presented here are readings from noted Civil War photographer Alexander Gardner, which correspond to particular photographs, originally published as Gardner’s Photographic Sketch Book of the War. Gardner worked for the famous Civil War photographer Mathew Brady. Of particular interest is the photograph now known as “The Sharpshooter’s Den” by Gardner.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwpcam/cw00171.jpg

Teachers may wish to download this photo and create an overhead transparency of it. Historian William Frassanito, in his book Gettysburg:  A Journey in Time, contends that the soldier’s body was, in fact, moved to the location of the den.

Teachers may have students read the accompanying piece “Does the Camera Ever Lie?”

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwpcam/cwcam1.html

The photo, “Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter’s Den” was published and distributed in its time as one way of swaying public opinion against the war. By seeing the horrors of a dead solider, with his gun, or hundreds of dead soldiers on a battlefield, the photograph and its accompanying caption, could communicate to readers much more than words alone. Discuss the phrase, “A picture is worth a thousand words.”

 

Teaching the Lesson

Introduce the language of photography by reading “Word and Image:  The Language of Photography”

http://www.time.com/time/teach/archive/981012/text5.html to the students. This is a good site that introduces students to some of the key concepts in photography.

 

Share the “The Home of The Rebel Sharpshooter’s Den” photograph.

http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/cwphtml/cwpcam/cw00171.jpg

with the students.

 

Encourage discussion about the photograph by posing the following questions to the students:

 

Who took the photo?

Did the dead soldier fight for the North or the South?

How did he die?

Why was he alone?

How did his gun get in the position of leaning against the cave wall?

Did he die fighting any famous Civil War battle?

 

Following this discussion, the teacher should tell the students that the  body in the image (photograph) was moved from the Gettysburg battlefield to this location. Students may then discuss the possible reasons for this happening making sure to discuss the constructed nature of photographs.

 

After Teaching the Lesson

The students will analyze “The Home of the Rebel Sharpshooter’s Den” using the Student Rubric for Analyzing the Civil War Photograph.